IS  ERNE< 


=  NAN  13 


IRecollectione  anb  OLcttcra 

OF 

ERNEST  RENAN 


ISABEL  F.   HAPGOOD 


NEW  YORK 

CASSELL   PUBLISHING   COMPANY 

104   &    106    FOURTH    AVENUE 


COPYRIGHT,  1892,  BY 
CASSELL  PUBLISHING  COMPANY. 


rights  reserved. 


THE   MERSHON   COMPANY   PRESS, 
RAHWAY,  N.  J. 


CONTENTS. 


PREFACE, v 

EMMA  KOSILIS, i 

SUPPLEMENT  TO  PAGE  119    OF    "SOUVENIRS    D'EN- 

FANCE," 30 

THE  DOUBLE  PRAYER 35 

SPEECH  DELIVERED  AT  THE  INAUGURATION  OF  THE 
STATUE  OF  BRIZEUX  AT  LORIENT,  SEPTEMBER 

9,  1888, 44 

LOVE  AND  RELIGION 4g 

THE  CELTIC  DINNER,  55 

THE  GAULS  IN  BRITTANY, 68 

CAN  ONE  WORK  IN  THE  COUNTRY  ?  A  SPEECH  DELIV- 
ERED AT  THE  SORBONNE  AT  A  GENERAL  SESSION 

OF  THE  CONGRESS  OF  THE  LEARNED  SOCIETIES, 

JUNE  15,  1889, 72 

SPEECH  AT  THE  FESTIVAL  OF  THE  FELIBRES,  AT  SCEAUX, 

JUNE  21,  1891 83 

MEMORIES  OF  THE  "  JOURNAL  DES  DEBATS,"  .  .  91 
LETTER  TO  M.  BERTHELOT,  MINISTER,  .  .  .  in 
A  WORD  ON  THE  EXPOSITION.  LETTER  TO  M.  JULES 

LEMA!TRE, 123 

THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTENARY  OF  POMPEII.  LETTER 
TO  THE  DIRECTOR  OF  THE  "  JOURNAL  DES  DE- 
BATS,"  125 

THE  PORTRAITS  OF  ST.  PAUL.     LETTER  TO  M.  MEZIERES 

OF  THE  FRENCH  ACADEMY, 146 

iii 


CONTENTS. 


REPLY  TO  THE  SPEECH  OF  RECEPTION  INTO  THE  FRENCH 
ACADEMY  OF  M.  JULES  CLARETIE,  FEBRUARY  21, 

1889, 156 

LECTURE  BEFORE  THE  ALLIANCE  FOR  THE  PROPAGATION 

OF  THE  FRENCH  LANGUAGE,  FEBRUARY  2,  1888,        186 
SPEECH  DELIVERED  AT  MONTMORENCY,  ON  THE  OCCA- 
SION OF  THE  REMOVAL  OF  THE  ASHES  OF  MICKIE- 

wicz,  JUNE  29.  1890 198 

VICTOR  HUGO,          .        ......        203 

GEORGE  SAND, 209 

M.  COUSIN 214 

MADAME  HORTENSE  CORNU, 218 

QUEEN  SOPHIE  OF  HOLLAND,     .        .        .        .  •      .        233 
SPEECH  DELIVERED  AT  THE  FUNERAL  OF  M.  ERNEST 

HAVET,  DECEMBER  24,  1889 238 

SPEECH  AT  THE  FUNERAL  OF  M.  CUVILLIER-FLEURY, 

OCTOBER  21,  1887 244 

SPEECH  DELIVERED  AT  THE  INAUGURATION  OF  THE 

STATUE  OF  M.  ABOUT,  DECEMBER  20, 1887,     •       •     250 
LETTER  TO  M.  GUSTAVE  FLAUBERT  ON  THE  "  TEMPTA- 
TION OF  SAINT  ANTHONY,"         ....        254 

HENRI  FREDERIC  AMIEL 262 

A  PHILOSOPHICAL  EXAMINATION  OF  CONSCIENCE,      .        295 


PREFACE. 


THE  composition  of  this  little  volume  was  sug- 
gested to  me,  so  far  as  the  first  part  is  concerned, 
at  least,  by  my  dear  friend  Calmann-LeVy,  in  one 
of  the  last  visits  which  he  paid  me  at  the  College 
de  France,  about  the  month  of  May  last.  We  cal- 
culated together  the  delay  which  the  completion  of 
the  fourth  volume  of  the  "  History  of  the  People 
of  Israel  "  would  entail.  The  result  of  our  calcu- 
lation was,  that  it  could  be  done  only  for  the  end 
of  the  year  1892.  "Could  you  not," he  said  to  me, 
"  give  me,  in  the  meantime,  a  volume  of  miscellanies 
which  could  appear  next  winter  ?" 

I  enumerated  to  him  several  instructive  articles 
which  had  never  been  collected  together.  "  No," 
he  said  to  me ;  "  take  me  as  the  measure  of  the 
public.  What  we  wish  from  you,  just  now,  is  a 
volume  in  the  style  of  your  '  Souvenirs,'  interesting 

for  everybody,  simple,  personal "  "  I  have,"  I 

told  him,  "  several  Breton  papers,  made  up  of  old 
images,  already  firmly  fixed.  Perhaps  others  will 
occur  to  me.  But,  in  order  to  form  a  volume  from 
them,  years  would  be  required."  "  You  have  also 
some  short  speeches,  some  lectures.  Could  not  you 


VI  PREFACE. 

with  these  compose  a  volume  which  would  form  a 
sort  of  sequel  to  your  "  Souvenirs  "  ? 

I  have  on  several  occasions  reproached  the 
minds  of  our  day  with  being  too  subjective,  with 
busying  themselves  too  much  over  themselves,  with 
not  being  sufficiently  carried  away,  absorbed  by 
the  object,  that  is  to  say,  by  that  which  is  before 
us,  by  the  world,  nature,  history.  It  is  always  bad 
to  talk  of  one's  self.  That  presupposes  that  one 
thinks  a  great  deal  about  one's  self  ;  but  time  de- 
voted to  thinking  of  one's  self  is  a  theft  from  God, 
as  people  would  have  said  in  former  days.  At  the 
time  when  I  began  to  make  that  series  of  my  con- 
fidences,  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Motides,  I  met 
Jules  Sandeau,  who  told  me  that  he  had  found  pleas- 
ure in  reading  them.  "  Dulcia  vitia  I  "  I  answered 
him  ;  "  the  public,  which  is  indulgent  now,  will  take 
its  revenge  some  day.  And  how  shall  I  know  when 
it  is  on  the  point  of  changing  its  mind  ?".... 
"  No,  Renan,"  he  said  to  me,  "the  public  will  al- 
ways be  glad  when  you  speak  to  it  of  yourself." 
Sandeau's  opinion  has  led  me  rather  far,  it  may 
be ;  but  let  my  friends  who  treat  these  little  vol- 
umes as  puerilities  cease  their  fears  ;  I  shall  com- 
mit no  more.  I  have  been  playing  a  rather  danger- 
ous game  for  some  time  :  talking  incessantly  of 
dying,  and  gaining  constantly  in  health.  I  am 
afraid  of  being  soon  called  upon  to  keep  my  word, 
under  penalty  of  no  longer  being  taken  seriously. 
Having  entered  upon  one  course  of  action,  I  am 


PREFACE.  Vll 

speedily  assailed  by  this  verse,  which  Augustin 
Thierry  often  quoted  to  me  to  hold  me  back,  when 
he  thought  that  I  was  going  too  far  : 

Claudite  jam  en  rivos  pueri  ;  sat  prata  biberunt.* 

A  few  days  after  the  conversation  which  I  held 
with  my  dear  Calmann,  I  heard  one  morning  of  the 
fatal  blow  which  had  taken  him  from  us.  Great 
was  my  grief.  Calmann  was  one  of  the  best  men 
whom  I  have  ever  known.  He  really  belonged  to 
the  tribe  of  those  who  love  peace  ;  he  had  no  pre- 
sumption, no  pride,  none  of  the  defects  which  lead 
men  astray  and  render  them  unhappy.  The 
serenity  of  his  soul  was  that  of  a  good  man,  sure 
of  being  in  accord  with  superior  rule.  He  had 
true  piety,  that  which  comes  from  a  tradition  re- 
ceived by  the  heart,  and  he  followed  Hillet's  pre- 
cept :  "  Be  the  disciple  of  Aaron,  who  loved 
peace."  The  frightful  egotism  of  this  epoch  had 
not  attacked  his  house  ;  for  he  was  not  an  egotist 
himself.  The  profound  sentiment  of  affection  and 
respect  which  his  collaborators  cherished  for  him 
was  touching.  He  had  solved  for  himself  the 
great  difficulty  of  our  time,  which  is  to  make 
numerous  subordinates  contribute  to  a  common 
work.  He  solved  it  by  making  himself  beloved 
by  them,  by  making  them  love  what  they  did. 
Ah  !  if  all  the  chiefs  of  great  industries  did  the 
same,  the  ulcers  which  are  devouring  us,  and  which 

*  Close  the  gates,  boys  ;  the  meadows  have  drunk  enough. 


viii  PREFACE. 

threaten  the  life  of  modern  societies,  would  soon 
be  healed. 

It  was  in  his  family,  above  all,  that  he  was  him- 
self,  calm,  happy,  sure  of  recovering  new  life  in  a 
united  family,  in  perfect  accord  with  him.  Every 
day  he  played  for  an  hour  with  his  grandsons, 
tasting  that  great  joy  of  seeing  the  windows  of  life 
open  on  one  side,  when  they  were  closing  on  the 
other.  The  veneration  which  he  cherished  for  his 
brother,  during  the  latter's  life  and  after  his  death, 
arose  from  the  admiration  which  he  felt  from 
childhood  for  the  astounding  intelligence  of 
Michel  ;  that  marvelously  lucid  brain,  that  sur- 
prising activity  subjugated  him.  He.  had  not  cre- 
ated the  house,  but  he  was  well  constituted  to 
maintain  and  continue  it.  His  rare  judgment 
enabled  him  to  avoid  all  errors  ;  thanks  to  him, 
the  great  publishing  establishment  founded  by 
Michel  remained  at  the  service  of  French  letters, 
a  powerful  instrument  in  disseminating  them. 
The  hours  which  he  came  to  spend  with  me  re- 
stored my  youth.  I  feel  the  need  of  uprightness 
about  me  ;  I  like  to  have  the  pages  on  which  I  write 
well  ruled,  and,  as  I  grow  older,  my  great  joy  is  to 
retrace  old  memories.  Farewell,  dear  Calmann  ! 

It  is  under  the  auspices  of  this  friendly  name, 
that  I  present  once  more,  to  an  indulgent  public, 
a  volume  composed  of  those  little  frivolities  which, 
while  evoking  thought,  render  life  amiable  and 
cause  it  to  be  endured.  Nevertheless,  I  have  in- 


PREFACE.  ix 

troduced  into  it  a  little  philosophy  ;  in  particular 
the  examination  of  my  conscience  for  1889.  I 
have  not  modified  my  manner  of  regarding  the 
universe  materially  since  that  time.  I  perceive, 
more  and  more  clearly,  that  we  know  very  little  of 
what  we  would  like  to  know.  In  philosophy,  one 
must  have  confidence  in  the  infinite  goodness,  and 
guard  one's  self  against  vain  eagerness.  One 
gains  nothing  by  importuning  truth,  by  soliciting 
it  every  day.  That  is  a  bad  sign,  if  you  like  ; 
truth  is  deaf  and  cold,  and  our  ardor  has  no  effect 
upon  her.  Die  neue  Philosophic — Die  neuere 
Philosophic — Die  neueste  Philosophie  (The  new 
Philosophy — The  newer  Philosophy — The  newest 
Philosophy).  Good  Heavens !  how  childish  are 
these  rising  degrees  of  emphasis  !  Why  thus  dis- 
pute with  each  other  for  priority  in  error  !  Let 
us  learn  to  wait  ;  perhaps  there  is  nothing  at  the 
end  ;  let  us  learn  to  be  ignorant,  that  the  future 
may  know.  Who  knows  ?  Perhaps  truth  is  sad  ; 
let  us  not  be  in  such  a  haste  to  learn  it. 

I  am  pained  by  the  sort  of  agitation  which  I  per- 
ceive in  the  young  people  who,  by  the  privilege  of 
their  age,  should  be  so  serene.  One  would  say  that 
this  young  generation  had  read  neither  the  history 
of  philosophy  nor  Ecclesiastes.  "  What  has  been 

is  that  which  will  be "     But,  dear  children, 

it  is  useless  to  give  yourselves  such  a  headache. 
Amuse  yourselves,  since  you  are  only  twenty  years 
old  ;  work  also.  If  we  know  nothing  of  meta- 


X  PREFACE. 

physics,  on  the  other  hand,  physics,  chemistry, 
astronomy,  geology,  and  history,  are  full  of  revela- 
tions. Oh  !  what  things  you  will  know  in  forty  or 
fifty  years,  which  I  shall  never  know  !  And  then, 
what  humanitarian  problems  you  will  see  solved  ! 
What  is  the  Emperor  William  III.  ?  What  will 
become  of  the  conflict  of  European  nationalities  ? 
What  turn  will  social  questions  take  ?  Will  any- 
thing come  out  of  the  Socialistic  movement, properly 
speaking  ?  What  will  be  the  fate  of  the  Papacy 
in  the  near  future  ?  Alas  !  I  shall  die  before  1  have 
seen  these  things,  and  you  will  know  them  !  It  is 
asserted  that  there  exist  in  Lebanon,  ancient 
Arabic  testaments,  where  the  dead  man  makes  it  a 
condition  of  his  donations,  that  the  people  shall 
come  and  inform  him,  in  his  tomb,  when  the  French 
become  masters  of  the  land  once  more.  There  are 
moments,  in  fact,  when  I  say  to  myself,  that  there 
is  a  piece  of  news  which,  whispered  furtively  in  my 
ear,  in  my  grave,  would  make  me  quiver  to  the 
point  of  coming  to  life  again.  But  I  have  too  often 
read  in  the  Bible  that  one  really  knows  nothing  in 
the  depths  of  sheol  of  what  is  taking  place  on 
the  earth,  that  one  hears  nothing  there,  that  one 
remembers  nothing,  to  put  any  clause  of  that  sort 
at  the  end  of  my  will. 

Why  rise  in  revolt  against  truths  as  old  as  the 
world  ?  Was  it  only  yesterday  that  it  was  discov- 
ered that  man  is  a  fragile  and  perishable  creature  ? 
I  am  not  one  of  those  of  whom  that  very  ancient 


PREFA  CE.  XI 

prophet  speaks,  Qui  nihil patiebatur  super  contritione 
Joseph. 

I  pity  that  poor  Joseph,  I  pity  the  young  men 
who  are  devoured  by  a  pessimism  which  will  not  be 
consoled.  We  frequently  read  on  ancient  tombs  : 
"  Courage,  dear  so  and  so  ;  no  one  is  immortal  ; 
Hercules  himself  died."  One  may  find  the  conso- 
lation rather  feeble  ;  it  is  real,  nevertheless 

Marcus  Aurelius,  dear  friends,  was  superior  to  all 
others  in  goodness,  and  Marcus  Aurelius  was  con- 
tent with  it.  Have  we  ever  believed  that  we 
should  not  die  ?  Let  us  die  calmly,  in  the  com- 
munion of  humanity  and  the  religion  of  the  future, 
when  we  have  accomplished  our  destiny.  The 
existence  of  the  world  is  assured  for  a  long  time  to 
come.  France,  in  her  giddy  comet-flight,  will  per- 
haps come  out  of  it  better  than  certain  indications 
would  lead  one  to  believe.  The  future  of  science 
is  guaranteed  ;  for.  in  the  scientific  balance,  every- 
thing is  added,  and  nothing  is  lost.  Error  does 
not  found  anything  ;  no  error  lasts  long.  Let  us  be 
tranquil.  In  less  than  a  hundred  thousand  years 
the  earth  will  have  discovered  the  means  of  supply- 
ing the  place  of  coal,  and,  up  to  a  certain  point  of 

virtue  there  will   be  bad  times  to  traverse 

Moral  value  is  on  the  ebb,  that  is  sure  ;  abnega- 
tion has  almost  disappeared  ;  we  see  the  day 
coming  when  everything  will  be  syndicates,  where 
organized  egotism  will  take  the  place  of  love  and 
devotion.  Our  century  has  created  more  and 


XU  PREFACE. 

more  perfect  tools,  without  perceiving  that  the  use 
of  these  tools  supposes  a  certain  degree  of  moral- 
ity, of  conscience,  of  devotion,  in  work  or  in  man. 
The  two  things  which,  up  to  this  time,  have  resisted 
the  fall  of  respect — the  army  and  the  church — both 
founded  on  illusions,  will  soon  be  carried  away  in 
the  general  torrent.  It  is  of  no  consequence  ;  the 
resources  of  humanity  are  infinite.  Eternal  works 
will  be  accomplished,  without  the  foundation  of 
living  forces,  always  rising  to  the  surface,  being 
ever  exhausted.  Science,  above  all,  will  continue 
to  astonish  us  by  its  revelations,  which  will  put  the 
infinite  of  space  and  time  in  the  place  of  a  petty 
svorld  conceived  according  to  the  measure  of 
imagination  of  a  child.  Is  the  need  of  eternal 
consciousness  which  torments  us,  moreover,  a 
simple  illusion  ?  No,  no.  On  such  a  matter, 
formal  negations  are  as  rash  as  absolute  affirma- 
tions. Religion  is  true  in  the  infinite.  When  God 
shall  be  complete  he  will  be  just.  I  am  convinced 
that  virtue  will  turn  out  definitely,  one  of  these 
days,  to  have  been  the  better  part.  Let  us  stand 
firm  ;  let  us  endure  the  raillery  of  those  who  pre- 
tend to  be  better  informed.  Merit  lies  in  affirm- 
ing duty  against  apparent  evidence.  If  virtue 
were  a  good  investment,  business  people,  who  are 
very  sagacious,  would  all  have  noticed  the  fact ; 
they  would  all  be  virtuous.  No,  it  is  a  bad  invest- 
ment in  the  finite  order,  but,  in  the  infinite, 
parallels  meet  ;  in  the  infinite,  negations  vanish, 
contradictions  are  merged. 


PREFACE.  xill 

Nothing  proves  to  us  that  there  exists  in  the 
world  a  central  consciousness,  a  soul  of  the  uni- 
verse ;  but  nothing  proves  the  contrary,  either. 
We  do  not  remark  in  the  universe  any  sign  of 
deliberate  and  thoughtful  action.  We  may  affirm 
that  no  action  of  this  sort  has  existed  for  millions 
of  centuries.  But.  thousands  of  centuries  are  noth- 
ing in  infinity.  What  we  call  long  is  very  short  in 
comparison  with  another  measure  of  size.  When 
the  chemist  arranges  an  experiment  that  is  to  last 
for  years,  everything  which  takes  place  in  his 
retorts  is  regulated  by  the  laws  of  absolute  uncon- 
sciousness ;  which  does  not  mean  that  a  will  has 
not  intervened  at  the  beginning  of  the  experiment, 
and  that  it  will  not  intervene  at  the  end.  Mil- 
lions of  microbes  may  have  been  produced  in 
the  interval  ;  if  these  microbes  had  had  sufficient 
intelligence,  they  might,  by  reasoning  on  the  brief 
period  permitted  to  their  observations,  allow  them- 
selves to  go  so  far  as  to  say  :  "  The  world  has 
no  room  for  special  volitions."  And  they  would 
be  mistaken. 

What  we  call  time  is,  perhaps,  a  minute  between 
two  miracles.  "  We  do  not  know  ;  "  that  is  all 
that  one  can  say  clearly  about  that  which  lies 
beyond  the  finite.  Let  us  deny  nothing,  let  us 
assert  nothing,  let  us  hope.  An  immense  moral, 
and,  perhaps,  intellectual  decline  will  follow  the 
day  when  religion  disappears  from  the  world.  We 
can  get  along  without  religion,  because  others  have 
it  for  us.  Even  those  who  do  not  believe  are 


xiv  PREFACE. 

swept  along  by  the  more  or  less  believing  masses  ; 
but  woe  to  us  on  that  day  when  the  masses  have 
no  longer  any  enthusiasm.  One  can  do  much  less 
with  a  humanity  which  does  not  believe  in  the 
immortality  of  the  soul  than  with  a  humanity 
which  does  believe  in  it.  A  man's  value  depends 
upon  the  proportion  of  religious  sentiment  which 
he  has  carried  away  with  him  from  his  early  educa- 
tion, and  which  perfumes  his  whole  life.  The 
religious  zones  of  humanity  live  on  a  shadow. 
We  live  only  upon  the  shadow  of  a  shadow.  What 
will  the  people  who  come  after  us  live  upon  ? 

Let  us  not  quarrel  over  the  quantity  or  the  for- 
mula of  religion  ;  let  us  confine  ourselves  to  not 
denying  it  ;  let  us  preserve  the  category  of  the 
unknown,  the  possibility  of  dreaming.  Christian- 
ity has  rendered  us  too  exacting,  too  hard  to  please. 
We  want  heaven,  nothing  less.  Let  us  content 
ourselves  with  smaller  profits.  A  few  years  ago 
when  M.  de  Rothschild  was  upholding  with  vivacity, 
in  the  Israelite  consistory,  the  doctrine  of  the 
immortality  of  the  soul,  a  learned  Israelite  of  the 
most  ancient  school  said  to  me  :  "  Can  one  under- 
stand that  ?  So  rich  a  man — and  he  wants  a  para- 
dise to  boot  !  Let  him  leave  that  to  us  poor 
devils." 

The  Middle  Ages  entertained  very  philosophical 
views  on  this  point.  Beasts  receive  in  this  world 
the  reward  for  the  good  that  they  have  done.  It 
was  related  that  some  nuns  had  trained  a  hind  to 


PREFACE.  XV 

be  very  devout  to  the  Virgin.  The  little  animal 
knelt  upon  a  praying-stool  before  the  sacred 
image  ;  it  was  full  of  piety.  As  hinds  possess 
no  immortal  soul,  and,  consequently,  cannot  enter 
into  paradise,  the  nuns  were  very  anxious  that 
their  little  pet  should  have  here  below  those  pleas- 
ures which  it  craved  ;  they  stuffed  it  with  pre- 
serves. Very  nearly  the  same  thing  can  be  read  in 
the  life  of  the  Fathers  of  the  desert.  The  lion 
which  St.  Anthony  made  come  for  the  purpose  of 
burying  St.  Paul,  worked  away  with  his  claws  with 
astonishing  zeal.  By  way  of  wages,  St.  Anthony 
bestows  upon  him  his  benediction,  the  effect  of 
which  is  to  make  him  immediately  meet  a  sheep, 
which  he  devours.  Where  is  the  justice  for  the 
sheep  ?  you  will  say  to  me.  Ah  !  that  is  precisely 
what  is  not  clear;  or  rather,  it  is  clear  that,  in  the 
whole  organization  of  the  world,  there  is  not  a 
trace  of  justice  for  the  sheep. 

Let  us  accustom  ourselves,  like  the  nuns'  hind, 
to  be  content  with  little  dainties,  let  us  try  to  ac- 
quire a  taste  for  them.  Let  us  be  austere  toward 
ourselves,  but  let  us  not  impoverish  life.  On  all 
these  points  we  must  not  listen  to  the  literary 
subtleties  of  our  day.  Let  us  not  deprive  human- 
ity of  its  joys  ;  let  us  find  our  joy  in  watching  it 
enjoy  itself.  The  joy  of  others  is  a  great  part  of 
our  joy ;  it  constitutes  the  great  reward  of  the 
upright  life,  which  is  gayety. 

I    have   been   much    reproached    for   preaching 


XVI  PREFACE. 

that  religion  which  is  easy  in  appearance,  but 
which,  in  reality,  is  the  most  difficult  of  all.  Not 
everyone  is  gay  who  wills  to  be  so.  For  that,  one 
must  come  of  an  ancient  race,  which  has  not  suf- 
fered surfeit ;  one  must  also  be  content  with  one's 
life.  My  life  has  been  that  which  I  wished,  that 
which  I  conceived  as  the  best.  If  I  had  to  live  it 
over  again,  I  would  not  make  any  great  change  in 
it.  On  the  other  hand,  I  am  a  little  afraid  of  the 
future.  I  shall  have  my  biography  and  my  legend. 
My  legend  ?  .  .  .  .  Having  some  experience  of  ec- 
clesiastical writers,  I  can  sketch  out  in  advance  the 
.way  in  which  it  will  be  written  up  in  Spanish  in 
some  Catholic  review  of  Santa  Fe,  in  the  year 
2000.  The  legends  of  the  enemies  of  the  official 
church  are  all  run  in  the  same  mold.  The  end 
which  the  book  of  the  Acts  attributes  to  Judas 
"  crepuit  medius  "  (he  burst  in  twain)  forms  the 
perfunctory  base  of  them.  For  one  part  of  his- 
torical tradition,  I  shall  end  like  that,  in  a  manner 
combined  from  Arius  and  Voltaire.  Heavens ! 
how  black  I  shall  be  !  I  shall  be  so  all  the  more, 
because  the  Church,  when  she  feels  that  she  is  lost, 
will  end  with  malice  ;  she  will  bite  like  a  mad  dog. 
In  spite  of  all  this,  I  have  confidence  in  reason. 
The  enlightened  portion  of  humanity,  the  only  one 
for  which  I  care,  will  form  some  esteem  for  me. 
Five  hundred  years  hence  the  commission  on  the 
"  Literary  History  of  France,"  of  the  Academy  of 
Inscriptions  and  Belles-letters,  will  write  my  notice. 


PREFACE.  xvii 

It  will  be  obliged  to  combat  documents  which  will 
tell  it  that  I  received  a  million  from  M.  de  Roths- 
child for  writing  the  "  Life  of  Jesus,"  nearly  as 
much  from  the  Emperor  Napoleon  III.,  who,  later 
on,  having  dismissed  me,  gave  me  a  rich  pension 
on  the  Journal  des  Savants.  The  commission  will 
unravel  all  this,  in  accordance  with  the  rules  of 
criticism  ;  I  am  sure  that  its  verdict  will  be  ad- 
mitted by  sensible  people. 

In  reality,  I  fear  nothing  but  apochryphal  texts. 
There  exists  already  a  considerable  mass  of  texts, 
sayings,  and  anecdotes  which  are  attributed  to  me, 
and  amuse  the  Catholic  press.  The  clergy,  as  a 
rule,  quote  at  second  hand  ;  they  buy  few  books; 
they  take  their  quotations  from  the  petty  clerical 
reviews  of  the  lower  class.  Already,  almost  every- 
thing that  the  Bishops  quote  as  from  me  is  fab- 
ricated, or  full  of  contradictions.  I  entreat  the 
friends  of  truth,  in  the  future,  not  to  accept,  as 
coming  from  me,  anything  but  what  has  appeared 
in  the  volumes  published  by  Levy.  The  sayings 
and  conversations  which  are  attributed  to  me  are 
nearly  all  invented.  At  the  epoch  when  I  published 
the  "  Vie  de  Jesus,"  journals  paid  by  the  Jesuits 
published,  as  mine,  counterfeited  autographs  against 
which  I  have  never  entered  a  complaint.  I  repeat, 
five  hundred  years  hence,  the  commission  on  the 
"  Literary  History  "  will  be  of  the  opinion  that  this 
proves  nothing.  And  then,  five  hundred  years  is  a 
very  long  time.  Man  has  such  puerile  ideas  about 


xvni  PREFACE. 

death  that  he  imagines  he  is  less  dead  when  he  is 
buried  than  he  is  five  hundred  years  later.  We 
are  less  solicitous  as  to  what  will  be  said  about  us 
after  the  lapse  of  several  centuries  than  of  what  is 
said  about  us  on  the  day  of  our  funeral,  a  day 
when  we  are  still  alive  and  the  slumbering  hero  of 
the  festival. 

I  confess  that  I  should  not  feel  indifferent  at  be- 
ing the  object  of  a  fine  funeral  in  Paris.  There 
are,  in  the  new  people  of  Paris,  materialistic  sides 
which  I  no  longer  comprehend  ;  but  the  people  of 
Paris  in  former  days  were  brave,  chivalrous,  friends 
of  the  right,  absurd,  idealistic.  Oh  !  how  I  have 
loved  them  !  To  be  for  such  people  as  that  the 
cause  of  a  day's  repose,  of  joy,  of  love,  and  of 
virtue,  would  make  me  very  happy.  And  if  they 
were  to  introduce  into  it  a  little  feasting  and  revelry, 
oh  !  really,  what  harm  would  that  do  ?  Popular 
festivals,  even  when  their  character  is  sad,  always 
have  a  little  the  air  of  a  fair  ;  for  the  masses  need 
to  purchase  on  the  street,  and  a  throng  of  poor 
people  are  glad  to  do  a  bit  of  peddling  on  that  day, 
and  earn  a  little  money. 

I  have  related  elsewhere  how  a  pious  person  of 
the  neighborhood  of  Nantes,  who  evidently  believes 
that  I  live  in  the  midst  of  feasts  and  dissipations, 
writes  me  the  following  words  every  three  months  : 
"  There  is  a  hell."  This  person,  whom  I  thank  for 
his  good  intentions,  does  not  alarm  me  as  much  as 
he  thinks.  I  should  like  to  be  sure  that  there  is  a 


PREFACE.  xix 

hell,  for  I  prefer  the  hypothesis  of  hell  to  that 
of  nothingness.  Many  theologians,  think  that,  for 
the  damned,  it  is  better  to  be  than  not  to  be,  and 
that  the  unhappy  wretches  are  perhaps  accessible 
to  more  than  one  good  thought.  For  my  part, 
I  imagine  that  if  the  Eternal,  in  his  severity, 
were  to  send  me  to  that  bad  place,  I  should 
succeed  in  escaping  from  it.  I  would  send  up  to 
my  Creator  a  supplication  which  would  make  him 
smile.  The  course  of  reasoning  by  which  I  would 
prove  to  him  that  it  was  through  his  fault  that  I 
was  damned,  would  be  so  subtle  that  he  would  find 
difficulty  in  replying  to  it.  Perhaps  he  would 
admit  me  to  paradise,  where  people  must  be  dread- 
fully bored.  He  certainly  does  allow  that  Satan, 
criticism,  to  enter,  from  time  to  time,  among  the 
children  of  God  to  amuse  the  assembly  a  little. 

To  tell  the  truth,  as  I  have  already  allowed  it  to 
be  understood  elsewhere,  the  fate  which  would  suit 
me  best  is  purgatory,  a  charming  place,  where 
many  charming  romances  begun  on  earth  must  be 
continued,  and  which  one  can  be  in  no  haste  to 
leave,  especially  in  view  of  the  few  attractions  of 
paradise.  What  sometimes  renders  me  not  so  very 
anxious  to  attain  that  place  of  delight  is  its  mo- 
notony. Can  one  change  one's  place  there  ? 
Heavens  !  how  quickly  one  will  have  exhausted 
one's  neighbor  !  Trips  from  planet  to  planet  would 
suit  me  well  enough  ;  but  the  devout  old  women, 
who,  they  say,  will  form  the  majority  of  the  elect, 


XX  PREFACE. 

would  not  suit  me  at  all.  May  God's  will  be 
done  ! 

Celestial  Father,  I  thank  thee  for  life  !  It  has 
been  sweet  and  precious  to  me,  surrounded  as  I 
have  been  by  excellent  beings  who  have  not  allowed 
me  to  doubt  thy  designs.  I  have  not  been  exempt 
from  sin  ;  I  have  had  the  defects  of  all  men  ;  but 
I  have  always  pulled  the  bridie  of  reason  in  time. 
Whatever  those  who  cail  themselves  thy  priests 
may  say,  I  have  not  committed  any  very  evil  actions. 
I  have  loved  truth,  and  I  have  made  sacrifices 
for  it;  I  have  desired  thy  day,  and  I  still  believe  in 
it.  Thy  joys  are  promised  to  the  sincere  man  ; 
the  frivolous  man  shall  not  approach  thee.  During 
my  first  journey  in  Syria,  I  received  hospitality  in  a 
patriarchal  house  of  Lebanon,  where  there  was  an 
aged  father,  of  great  piety,  who  conceived  a  great 
affection  for  me.  When  the  "  Life  of  Jesus  "  ap- 
peared, he  heard  many  sermons  against  me,  and 
entered  into  great  doubts.  He  applied  to  his  son 
Dominique,  who  was  well  posted  on  French  affairs 
and  who  had  accompanied  me  in  my  travels.  "  Tell 
me,  my  son,  what  are  M.  Renan's  errors.  Let  us 
proceed  in  due  order.  Among  the  things  which 
must  be  believed  there  is,  first,  God  the  Father. 
Let  us  see — does  he  believe  in  God  the  Father?" 
"  Oh  !  yes,"  answered  Dominique,  "on  that  point 
his  solidity  defies  attack."  "  That  is  a  great  deal, 
my  son;  that  is  a  great  deal,"  replied  the  old  man. 

Let  us  not  renounce  God  the 'Father  ;  let  us  not 


PREFACE  xxi 

deny  the  possibility  of  a  final  day  of  justice.  We 
have  never  been  in  one  of  those  tragic  situations 
where  God  is,  in  some  sort,  the  necessary  con- 
fidant and  consoler.  What  would  you  have  a  pure 
woman,  accused  unjustly,  do,  if  not  raise  her  eyes 
to  heaven  ?  or  the  victim  of  an  irreparable  judicial 
error,  a  man  who  dies  in  the  fulfillment  of  an  act  of 
self-devotion — a  noble  and  peaceful  man  massacred 
by  barbarous  soldiers  ?  Where  shall  we  seek  the 
true  witness  if  not  on  high,  in  unknown  space  ? 
Even  in  our  peaceful  lives,  where  great  trials  are 
rare,  how  often  we  feel  the  need  of  appealing  to 
the  absolute  verity  of  things,  of  saying  to  it,  "  Speak, 
speak."  The  moment  of  death  must  be  one  of 
those  moments.  I  think  that  very  few  men  have 
died  without  an  appeal  to  God,  without  prayer. 
The  moments  of  this  sort  are,  perhaps,  those  in 
which  we  are  in  the  right.  But  the  strange  thing 
about  it  is  that  we  never  obtain  the  slightest  sign 
to  show  that  our  protests  have  touched  anything. 
When  Nimrod  launched  his  arrows  against  heaven, 
they  came  back  to  him  stained  with  blood.  We 
obtain  no  response.  O  God  !  whom  we  adore  in 
spite  of  ourselves,  to  whom  we  pray  twenty  times 
a  day  without  knowing  it,  Thou  art  in  verity  a 
hidden  God. 

I  should  be  glad  to  have  this  small  volume  give 
the  reader  a  little  of  the  pleasure  which  I  have 
taken  in  composing  it.  It  completes  my  "  Souve- 
nirs," and  they  are  an  essential  part  of  my  work. 


XXll  PREFACE. 

Whether  they  augment  or  diminish  my  philosophi- 
cal authority,  they  explain  me — they  show  the 
origin  of  my  verdicts,  true  or  false.  My  mother, 
with  whom  I  was  so  poor,  by  whose  side  I  have 
toiled  for  hours,  pausing  only  to  say  to  her : 
"  Mamma,  are  you  satisfied  with  me  ? "  the  little 
friends  of  my  childhood,  who  enchanted  me  with 
their  discreet,  pretty  ways  ;  my  sister  Henriette, 
so  lofty,  so  pure,  who,  at  twenty  years  of  age,  led 
me  into  the  path  of  reason,  and  lent  me  her  hand 
to  traverse  a  difficult  passage,  have  embalmed  the 
beginning  in  an  aroma  which  will  last  until  death. 
I  was  brought  up  by  women  and  by  priests  ;  therein 
lies  the  whole  explanation  of  my  good  qualities  and 
my  defects.  In  Brittany,  the  women  are  superior 
to  the  men,  scold  the  men,  despise  them.  The 
priest,  also,  formerly  enjoyed  a  great  superiority 
over  laymen  ;  the  women  loved  their  parish  priest 
much  better  than  they  did  their  husbands.  The 
sort  of  embarrassment  which  I  feel  in  the  company 
of  those  who  are  not  consecrated  to  moral  and  in- 
tellectual things,  arises  from  the  scorn  which  my 
masters  taught  me  to  entertain  for  laymen.  There 
is  a  priest's  and  a  woman's  disdain  in  my  awkwar  1- 
ness.  In  my  manner  of  feeling  I  am  three-quar- 
ters a  woman. 

One  loves  thoroughly,  all  one's  life,  only  the 
heads  of  little  girls  which  one  has  seen  at  the  age 
of  sixteen.  That  is  what  incessantly  carries  me 
back  to  those  old  images,  now  almost  effaced.  If 


PREFACE.  xxiii 

I  am  wrong  in  this,  it  is  the  indulgence  which  the 
public  showed  to  my  "  Souvenirs"  which  has  in- 
duced me  to  do  evil.  I  must  say  that  my  phi- 
losophy counts  for  something  in  this  matter.  On 
many  points,  it  seems  to  me  that  people  of  the 
world  have  the  right  of  things  against  the  scholas- 
tics. They  see  better  the  living  whole.  Not  a 
single  philosopher  has  ever  turned  his  attention  to 
love.  Now,  I  persist  in  thinking  that  love  is  a 
strange  mystery,  and  the  best  proof  that  many 
things  which  go  on  in  us  proceed  from  beings 
which  are  in  us  but  are  not  us.  On  this  point  I 
am  full  of  discourse.  I  always  wish  to  begin  over 
again  all  that  I  have  said. 

How,  you  will  say,  does  it  come  that  you  talk  so 
continually  of  that  of  which  you  know  so  little  ?  Oh! 
here  I  enter  my  protest.  In  these  matters,  to  be  too 
well  posted  is  to  be  case-hardened.  Arnauld  was 
right  in  his  book  on  "  Frequent  Communion."  The 
Jansenists  thought,  very  justly,  that  too  frequent 
use  of  the  communion  destroys  the  taste  for  it,  de- 
creases its  savor.  The  same  thing  may  be  said  of 
love.  Those  who  speak  the  best  of  it  are  those 
who  have  misused  it  the  least,  and  have  considered 
it  as  a  religious  act.  Yes,  a  religious  act,  a  sacred 
moment  in  which  man  tastes  the  immense  joy  of 
begetting  life,  rises  above  his  habitual  mediocrity, 
sees  his  faculties  of  enjoyment  and  sympathy  ex- 
alted to  their  highest  limit.  Dear  and  touching 
aberration  !  love  is  as  eternal  as  religion.  Love  is 


XXIV  PREFACE. 

the  best  proof  of  God  ;  it  is  the  umbilical  cord  be- 
tween us  and  nature — our  true  communion  with 
the  infinite. 

I  often  reproach  myself,  at  my  age,  when  my  mind 
should  be  occupied  with  nothing  but  eternal  truths, 
for  devoting  a  part  of  my  days,  which  are  numbered, 
to  recalling  thoughts  which  many  people  would 
characterize  as  frivolous.  My  excuse  is  that  I 
have  given  myself  up  to  this  work  only  after  hav- 
ing completed  the  task  of  my  old  age,  the  "  His- 
tory of  the  People  of  Israel."  Many  and  able 
readers  have  been  so  good  as  to  charge  me  to  for- 
bid myself  all  episodical  labor  until  I  shall  have 
completed  this  work,  which  is  the  principal  work 
of  my  life.  I  have  followed  their  advice.  The 
"  History  of  the  People  of  Israel,  down  to  the  Ap- 
pearance of  Christianity,"  is  finished.  I  shall  still 
require  a  long  time  to  correct  the  proofs  •  but  the 
foundation  of  the  book  is  settled.  If  I  were  to  die 
to-morrow,  the  book  could  appear,  with  the  assist- 
ance of  a  good  corrector.  The  arch  of  the  bridge, 
which  still  remained  for  me  to  construct  between 
Judaism  and  Christianity,  is  established.  I  have 
succeeded,  so  far  as  is  possible,  in  showing  the 
special  soil  whence  Jesus  sprung.  Thus  my  prin- 
cipal duty  is  accomplished,  At  the  Academy  of 
Inscriptions  and  Belles-lettres,  the  work  on  the 
rabbis  is  also  nearing  its  end,  and  the  Corpus  in- 
scriptionum  semiticarum  is  in  excellent  hands.  All 
this  causes  me  great  inward  satisfaction,  and  this 


PREFACE.  XXV 

is  what  makes  me  believe  that,  after  having  paid 
nearly  all  my  debts,  I  may  well  amuse  myself  a  little, 
and,  without  scruple,  surrender  myself  to  the  joy  of 
gathering  together  these  leaves  which  are  often 
slight.  My  time  has  been  so  good  to  me,  it  has 
pardoned  me  so  many  faults,  that  I  hope  it  will 
exercise  its  customary  indulgence  toward  me  en 
this  occasion  also. 


RECOLLECTIONS 

AND 

LETTERS  OF  ERNEST  RENAN. 


EMMA    KOSILIS. 

ROSMAPAMON    IN    LOUANNEC. 

AMONG  the  traits  of  idealism  in  the  Breton  char- 
acter there  is  one  which  I  have  reproached  myself 
for  not  having  sufficiently  explained  in  my  "  Sou- 
venirs d'Enfance  " — it  is  the  capacity  to  live  and 
die  of  a  single  idea,  of  love  unuttered,  unvaried,  per- 
sistent even  unto  death. 

This  trait  has  been  recalled  to  me  by  those 
Breton  servants  who,  having  been  brought  to  Paris 
in  honest  families,  can  remain  for  years  without  go- 
ing out,  who  traverse  Paris  without  looking  at  it, 
with  unseeing  eyes  ;  who  ask  but  one  thing,  that  they 
may  live  alone,  apart,  seen  of  no  one.  Nearly 
always  a  secret  thought  fills  their  being.  Mystic 
reverie  is  sometimes  mingled  with  it  ;  but  it  is 
rarely  the  principal  cause  of  this  obstinate  need  for 
silence. 


4  RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

Most  frequently,  its  foundation  is  a  love  of  their 
childhood,  repressed,  chimerical,  backed  by  an  ex- 
cessively strong  moral  instinct.  Unconfessed  ex- 
ternally, this  sentiment  reigns  within  them  in  an 
'absolute  silence.  Nothing  exists  for  such  a  state 
of  soul,  nothing  pleases,  save  the  precious  thought. 
They  caress  it  for  hours  and  hours.  It  may  suffice 
for  years,  and  it  renders  them  indifferent  to  every- 
thing else. 

Ancient  physiology  designated  this  sort  of 
temperament  as  melancholy,  and  attributed  to 
it  all  the  extraordinary  things  which  occur  in 
this  world.  There  are,  in  fact,  very  few  strong 
lives  at  whose  base  we  do  not  find  the  secretum 
meum  mihi — the  personal  secrecy  of  the  great 
dwellers  in  solitude,  and  of  great  men.  The 
love  of  solitude  ordinarily  arises  from  an  inward 
thought  which  devours  all  about  it.  One  day  I 
quoted  to  my  sister  the  saying  of  Thomas  a  Kern- 
pis  :  in  angello  cum  libello*  The  remark  struck 
her  as  so  beautiful  that  she  took  to  repeating  it  to 
me  incessantly  as  her  motto.  Life  restricted  to 
one's  self  and  God  is  the  condition  requisite  to  act 
upon  men  and  to  conquer  them. 

The  great  patriotic,  scientific,  and  charitable 
applications  of  life,  come  from  prolonged  inter- 
course with  one's  self.  Mankind  will  never  know 
anything  of  these  extraordinary  examples  of  moral 
force  in  which  the  Eternal  rejoices,  that  jealous  wit- 
*  In  a  nook  with  a  book. 


ERNEST  RENAX.  5 

ness  of  souls,  who  reserves  for  himself  the  most 
beautiful  spectacles.  The  delectatio  morosa — the 
morose  pleasure  of  the  Middle  Ages — is,  in  one 
sense,  the  supreme  formula  of  the  universe. 

The  slowness  of  body  in  the  Breton  race,  that 
possibility,  even  among  the  children,  of  remaining 
motionless  for  hours,  springs,  in  great  part,  from 
that  necessity  for  long  periods  of  voluptuousness, 
of  idle  contemplation,  if  I  may  venture  to  charac- 
terize it  thus,  which  combines  ill  with  external 
activity,  and  seems  to  exact  complete  repose  of  the 
senses.  Tedium  does  not  exist  for  such  natures  ; 
what  others  call  ennui  is  for  them  profound  delight, 
a  soliloquy  in  the  infinite.  This  race  has  few  de- 
sires, few  needs  ;  in  love  it  knows  how  to  wait. 
My  sister  related  to  me,  on  this  subject,  an  anec- 
dote which  she  admired  greatly  ;  it  was  the  history 
of  the  mother  of  one  of  her  friends.  She  took 
pleasure  in  it,  because  it  was  a  case  of  heroic  love, 
which  corresponded  singularly  well  with  her  own 
character.  I  had  forgotten  this  history  ;  some  re- 
cent circumstances  have  recalled  it  to  my  memory. 
My  sister  has  frequently  told  me  the  name  of  the 
respectable  person  to  whom  she  had  dedicated  so 
great  a  worship.  I  shall  call  her  Emma  Ko- 
silis.* 

She  was  not  of  perfect  beauty  ;  but  her  face  had 
an  indescribable  charm,  my  sister  affirmed.  Her 
eyes  were  exquisitely  languorous,  her  eyelids,  which 
*  Kosilis  means  "  old  church." 


6  RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

expressed  the  most  imperceptible  quivers  of  timid 
modesty,  had  the  air  of  possessing  a  soul.  Her 
skin  was  so  fine  that  the  slightest  acceleration  of 
life  was  betrayed  in  it  by  fugitive  blushes,  the  sign 
of  a  secret  which  she  did  not  reveal.  In  a  word, 
it  was  the  same  candid  and  pure  quality  which,  in 
that  little  Breton,  Mademoiselle  de  Qtieroualle, 
made  a  profound  impression  on  the  heart  of  Charles 
II. 

It  was  her  virginal  complexion  which,  beneath 
the  coif  of  the  little  participants  in  a  Pardon  in 
Brittany,  seemed  to  evoke  a  flood  of  innocence, 
which  rendered  you  belter  for  hours.  Better  or 
worse  ?  Brittany  is  the  land  where  the  difference 
between  men  and  women  is  the  greatest,  and,  as 
barbarism  is  never  far  distant  in  those  primitive 
countries,  it  sometimes  happens  that  this  feminine 
mother-of-pearl  gives  men  strange  nervous  attacks. 
Young  girls  have  been  found  assassinated  without 
having  been  violated.  In  former  days,  similar 
cases  of  assassinations  without  motive  were  com- 
mitted on  young  priests  ;  but  it  is  a  long  time 
since  these  acts  of  madness  have  been  seen. 

To  this  order  of  ideas  must  be  referred  a  pecu- 
liar trait  in  the  manners  of  Brittany.  I  mean  the 
total  absence  of  jewels  and  even  of  flowers  in  the 
attire  of  the  women.  The  clergy  are  opposed  to 
them,  and  certainly,  so  far  as  jewels  are  concerned, 
they  are  quite  right. 

In  the  nudity  of  ancient  times,  the  jewel  had  a 


ERNEST  RENAN.  7 

reason  for  its  existence,  and  Greece,  profiting  by 
certain  errors  of  the  Orient,  dared  to  attack  this 
problem,  the  most  delicate  of  all,  of  ornamenting 
by  applications  upon  the  living  flesh,  that  master- 
piece of  nature,  the  body  of  a  really  beautiful 
woman.  But  in  our  cold  climates,  and  with  our 
ideas  of  Christian  modesty,  the  jewel  has  no  longer 
any  reason  for  its  existence.  For  my  own  part,  I 
always  feel  a  sort  of  antipathy  toward  these 
attached  ornaments.  And  what,  good  God  !  have 
these  pendents  of  savages,  these  tinsel  rags  of  the 
Bedouins,  to  do  with  the  only  thing  that  is  of  any 
import — with  gentleness  and  innocence  of  the 
glance  ?  Are  virtue  and  candor  expressed  by 
jewels  ?  Has  any  jewel  ever  been  invented  for  the 
eyes  ?  There  is  the  odious  henna,  no  doubt  ; 
but  has  any  woman  who  respects  herself  ever  em- 
ployed it  ?  Frightful  idea — to  paint  in  black  the 
golden  balustrades  of  the  celestial  Jerusalem,  to 
soil  the  borders  of  the  sacred  fountain,  at  the 
bottom  of  which  we  behold  God  and  his  paradise. 
Shall  I  say  it  ?  Color  itself,  put  at  the  service 
of  beauty,  disturbs  and  troubles  me.  Black  and 
white  suffice  ;  better  than  all  adornments  they 
leave  room  for  dreams  of  the  veiled  and  amorous 
flesh.  Love  implies  the  rule  of  love  ;  it  assumes 
candor  and  modesty  in  the  woman.  Herein  is 
contained  a  certain  lie,  which  nature  has  willed 
and  which  certainly  serves  her  ends. 

One  of  the  legends  which  popular  imagination 


8  RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

has  grouped  around  Anne  of  Brittany  expresses 
well  that  shade  of  the  feminine  charm  which  has 
fallen  to  the  lot  of  our  good  little  race.  And  what 
is  related  of  the  country  of  Wales  does  not  dis- 
credit the  unity  of  the  two  populations  ;  the  char- 
acter of  Imogen  in  "  Cymbeline  "  is  essentially  a 
Breton  character.  I  will  go  further.  The  charm 
of  the  Englishwoman,  at  once  so  chaste  and  so 
voluptuous,  is  in  my  opinion  a  Celtic,  not  an  Anglo- 
Saxon  attribute.  But,  in  order  to  explain  this 
point,  I  must  set  forth  my  ideas  as  to  the  eth- 
nography of  England,  and  this  is  not  the  place 
to  do  so. 

It  is  related,  then,  that,  in  one  of  the  interviews 
which  the  last  and  very  popular  sovereign  of  Brit- 
tany had  with  Saint  Anne,  who  could  refuse  her 
nothing,  the  Duchess  asked  from  her  sainted 
patroness  a  special  gift  for  the  ladies  of  her 
province.  The  saint  granted  them  chastity,  and, 
since  that  day,  there  has  existed  no  example  of  a 
Breton  dame  who  has  been  unfaithful  to  her 
duties. 

This  was,  assuredly,  a  great  point  gained  ;  never- 
theless, the  Duchess  was  not  content  with  it,  and 
asked  the  saint  to  add  to  it  beauty.  Saint  Anne 
was  tolerably  embarrassed,  and  ended  by  confess- 
ing that  beauty  did  not  lie  in  her  domain.  The 
Virgin  Mary  has  reserved  that  for  herself.  The 
Queen  of  Heaven  alone  disposes  of  this  gift, 
unique,  rare,  excellent  above  all  others.  Neverthe- 


ERNEST  RENAN.  9 

less,  in  default  of  beauty,  Saint  Anne,  after  re- 
flection, granted  this  to  her  god-daughter  :  that 
these  same  dames  on  whom  she  could  bestow  only 
the  gift  of  chastity,  should  accomplish  with  this 
virtue  that  which  others  accomplish  with  their 
beauty. 

The  effects  of  beauty  obtained  by  the  skillfully 
managed  charm  of  virtue — this  is  the  gift  of  Saint 
Anne.  According  to  a  hymn  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
attributed  to  the  Abbess  Herrade,  such  is  also  the 
taste  of  Christ.  He  loves  only  graceful  and 
modest  young  girls  : 

Pulchras  vult  virginculas  ; 
Turpes  pellit  feminas.* 

Turpes  here  signifies  those  who  are  ugly  and 
vulgar  in  their  manners.  How  has  Christianity, 
always  so  moral,  been  thus  able  to  condemn 
ugliness  which,  judging  from  all  appearances,  is 
not  always  voluntary?  For  a  profound  reason  ;  it 
is  that  a  woman  who  is  truly  good  is  never  ugly. 
There  is  always  egotism  in  ugliness.  The  worthy 
person,  to  whom  the  gift  of  the  Virgin  Mary  has 
not  been  accorded,  can  always  give  herself  an 
equivalent  of  beauty  by  her  good-humor,  her  devo- 
tion, her  kind  heart.  Charm  has  no  need  to  justify 
itself  ;  its  triumph  is  the  proof  of  its  legitimacy. 
I  had  a  cousin,  who  afterward  became  the  best  of 

*  He  desires  only  fair  young  maidens  ;  he  banishes  wicked 
women. 


10          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

men,  but  who  in  his  childhood  was  a  demon,  a  real 
Berserker.  My  sister  alone,  a  very  gentle  little 
girl,  fifteen  years  of  age,  could  make  him  obey. 
He  broke  his  arm  in  an  attempt  to  dislodge  for  her 
a  bird's  nest  in  the  roof  of  a  shed  ;  my  sister  was 
obliged  to  remain  for  a  month  by  his  bedside,  in 
order  to  make  him  lie  quiet  in  his  apparatus. 

It  is  thus,  I  repeat,  that,  with  a  sober  little  air, 
which  presented  a  contrast  to  her  youth,  and  a 
slight  expression  of  gentle  sadness,  little  Querou- 
alle,  without  being  a  perfect  beauty,  bewitched 
King  Charles  II.,  who  would  look  at  no  one  but 
her  in  all  his  brilliant  court ;  which  the  Protestants 
explained  by  a  diabolical  science  of  feminine  per- 
versity. 

Good  Heavens  !  The  Protestants  were  not 
altogether  in  the  wrong  in  this  case,  and,  if  we 
maintain  that  chastity  is,  at  bottom,  the  acme  of 
sensuality,  modesty  the  height  of  coquetry,  I  shall 
not  deny  it.  There  are  women  who  are  dangerous 
through  their  innocence  ;  it  is  extremely  difficult  to 
distinguish  the  action  of  the  devil,  in  such  a  matter, 
from  that  of  the  good  God. 

The  white  God  and  the  black  God  of  the  Slavs 
are  not  so  opposed  as  these  good  people  imagine. 
Manichaeism  is,  I  think,  the  only  error  which  I  do 
not  profess  ;  the  world  is  completely  one  ;  every, 
thing  comes  from  a  single  God  ;  all  its  disso- 
nances are  merged,  at  a  certain  height,  into  a 
supreme  harmony,  which  is  love, 


ERNEST  RENAN.  " 

Little  Emma  Kosilis  knew  nothing  of  all  this  ; 
she  went  to  church  very  discreetly,  with  her  prayer- 
book  ;  and  the  fact  is,  that  toward  the  age  of  six- 
teen or  eighteen,  without  her  being  any  more  aware 
of  it  than  she  was  of  her  blooming  youth,  there 
was  no  room  in  her  little  soul  for  anyone  except  a 
young  man,  twenty  or  two-and-twenty  years  of 
age,  whom  she  often  saw,  and  whom  I  shall  call 
Emilien. 

This  affair  had  no  beginning.  It  was  a  taking 
possession,  which  was  absolutely  unperceived.  In 
these  countries  of  honest  morals,  the  relations 
between  the  young  people  of  the  two  sexes  are  far 
freer  and  more  prolonged  than  in  suspicious  Paris, 
which  is  always  inclined  to  believe  evil.  My  moral 
education  was  conducted  thus,  by  several  very 
pure  and  very  pretty  female  friends  of  my  child- 
hood ;  to  the  present  day,  with  good  reason,  all 
sweet  and  kindly  things  appear  to  me  under  the 
form  of  a  wise  little  girl  of  twelve  or  fourteen,  who 
makes  me  a  discreet  sign.  I  experienced  one  of 
my  most  vivid  emotions  when,  forty  years  later, 
one  of  these  friends  of  my  childhood  addressed  me 
as  :  "  My  dear  Ernest." 

Emma  had  been  in  the  habit  of  seeing  Emilien 
ever  since  she  had  had  consciousness  of  herself ; 
she  dreamed  rather  than  thought,  and  so  it  came 
to  pass  that  one  day,  without  her  having  the 
faintest  suspicion  in  the  world  of  it,  Emilien  came 
to  occupy  the  entire  cavity  of  her  little  heart. 


12          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

In  order  that  nothing  here  below  may  boast  of 
its  own  merits,  the  election  of  love  is,  like  the 
Divine  election,  purely  gratuitous.  It  is  ignorant 
of  its  own  motives.  The  young  man  whom  Emma 
loved  was  good-natured  and  rather  weak.  But 
just  this  simplicity,  this  absence  of  all  pretension, 
pleased  the  young  girl.  She  would  not  have 
noticed  a  superior  man,  and  moreover,  the  little 
circle  in  which  she  lived  would  not  have  furnished 
her  with  the  opportunity  of  encountering  many 
such  on  her  path.  There  was  no  room  in  her  for 
anything  but  that  strange,  unthinking  instinct, 
which  gives  no  reasons,  despises  our  conventions, 
and  asks  absolution  of  God  alone. 

I  was  so  vigorously  stoned,  a  year  or  two  ago, 
for  having  spoken  of  love,  in  this  good  land  of 
France — of  love  as  something  sacred,  religious, 
mystical,  that  I  shall  force  myself  to  be  brief  on 
this  occasion. 

Our  country,  which  is  indulgent  toward  black- 
guardism, makes  difficulties  about  allowing  one  to 
speak,  in  a  serious  tone,  of  the  deepest  secret  of 
nature,  of  that  distant  voice  of  a  world  which  de- 
sires to  be.  People  do  not  see  that,  by  leaving 
love  in  the  state  of  nonsense,  of  turpitude,  of 
coarse  jest,  they  accuse  the  Eternal  of  folly. 
What !  The  work  above  all  others,  the  continuance 
of  life,  is  attached  to  an  act  that  is  ridiculous  or 
coarse 

For  my  part,  that  which  seems  to  demonstrate  to 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  13 

me  the  divine  nature  of  love,  is  its  spontaneity.  It 
is  born  like  a  flower  of  the  fields  ;  it  acts  like  a 
loadstone  ;  the  Newtonian  attraction  is  not  more 
subtle  than  it.  Science  demonstrates  that  two 
molecules,  alone  in  the  world,  at  whatever  distance 
we  may  assume  them  to  be,  would  put  themselves 
in  motion  to  meet  each  other. 

Emma's  love  was  of  this  sort,  innocent  because 
it  was  unconscious.  She  had  a  very  delicate, 
very  just  sense  of  good  and  beautiful  things.  Now 
a  woman  does  not  attach  herself  to  pure  abstrac- 
tions ;  she  loves  good  when  good  is,  for  her,  some- 
one who  exists  and  lives.  Covered  by  the  deceptive 
mantle  of  an  infantile  security,  Emma's  love  soon 
became  complete  absorption.  For  whole  days  she 
remained  motionless,  abandoned  to  a  languorous 
indolence,  which  she  enjoyed  in  perfect  quietude, 
as  one  enjoys  a  warm  breeze,  without  inquiring 
whence  it  comes,  or  a  ripe  fruit  without  fearing 
that  the  Creator  may  have  concealed  a  poison  in  it. 

Naturally,  she  said  nothing  of  her  feelings  either 
to  the  man  whom  she  loved  or  to  her  family,  or  to 
her  companions.  Therein  lies  her  fault,  if  a  fault 
be  insisted  upon  ;  we  shall  see  how  she  was  des- 
tined to  expiate  it.  The  society  in  which'  she  lived 
was  perfectly  honest.  Her  discretion  was  so  abso- 
lute that  no  one  knew  anything  of  the  subject 
which  absorbed  her.  Thus  she  took  delight  in  her 
secret  for  a  long  time,  and  certainly,  her  enjoyment 
would  have  been  lessened  by  an  avowal. 


1 4         RECOLLECTIONS  A  ND  LE  TTERS  OF 

Her  timid  bearing  rendered  easy  for  her,  with- 
out the  slightest  hypocrisy,  that  air  of  indifference 
and  premeditated  abstraction  which  is  inculcated 
in  young  girls.  What  she  felt  was  so  vague,  her 
imagination  was  so  pure,  the  conversations  which 
she  was  in  the  habit  of  hearing  had  always  been  so 
proper,  that  the  idea  never  occurred  to  her  that 
there  was  anything  culpable  in  what  she  experi- 
enced. Her  heart  was  upright  before  herself.  Any 
hesitation  as  to  the  nature  of  that  which  rendered 
her  so  happy,  and  of  which  she  did  not  know  the 
name,  would  have  been  in  her  eyes  as  sinful  as  a 
blasphemy  against  God,  against  the  Church,  and 
against  its  sacraments. 

The  extreme  imprudence  of  such  conduct,  excus- 
able only  in  a  child,  was  soon  revealed.  While 
little  Emma  lived  only  in  her  love,  Emilien  thought 
of  her  not  at  all.  He,  like  everyone  else,  con- 
sidered her  touching  ;  but  he  would  never  have 
dared  to  tell  her  so.  He  was  a  mediocre  and  pas- 
sive being ;  he  allowed  his  mother  to  arrange  a 
marriage  for  him  ;  and  after  all  was  he  so  much  to 
blame  ?  Emma  was  so  modest  that  she  was  not  to 
be  distinguished  from  her  friends  ;  one  would 
have  said  that  she  sought  only  to  hide  herself. 

The  blow  was  as  sudden  as  a  clap  of  thunder  : 
one  day  while  she  was  conversing  with  her  com- 
panions, in  a  little  gathering,  in  the  depths  of  a 
garden,  they  discussed  various  things.  The  news, 
fresh  that  day,  was  the  marriage  of  Emilien  with 


E 'RNEST  RE  NAN.  15 

Anna  M .  It  was  spoken  of  as  certain.  Emma 

heard  all.  Such  was  her  command  over  herself 
that  no  one  even  suspected  that  a  dagger  had 
pierced  her  heart.  She  said  nothing,  rose  shortly, 
and  withdrew,  without  allowing  the  slightest  sign 
of  the  terrible  wound  which  she  had  just  received 
to  be  perceived. 

Another  piece  of  news  circulated  a  few  days 
later  in  the  company  of  the  same  young  girls,  as- 
sembled in  the  same  garden.  Emma  had  entered 
as  lay-sister  into  the  community  of  the  Ursuline 

Dames,  in  the  little  town  of  .  As  Emma  was 

very  pious,  this  surprised  no  one.  Her  secret  had 
belonged  so  exclusively  to  herself  alone  that  no 
one  connected  the  two  events.  The  idea  never  oc- 
curred to  anyone,  that  Emilien's  marriage  was  the 
cause  of  Emma's  entrance  into  religion.  Religious 
vocations  were  common  among  the  middle  classes 
of  these  little  towns.  Emma's  entrance  into  the 
community  of  the  Ursuline  Dames  was  regarded 
as  perfectly  simple,  and  did  not  provoke  the  faintest 
accusation  of  ulterior  motive. 

The  convent  of  the  Ursuline  Dames,  moreover, 
admitted  of  different  degrees  of-religious  vocation. 
By  the  side  of  the  sisters  who  were  bound  to  the 
order  by  perpetual  vows,  there  were  pious  persons 
who  wore  a  costume  which  recalled  that  of  the  or- 
der, minus  the  sacramental  veil,  and. who  observed 
the  same  practices  as  the  nuns,  without  assuming 
any  obligations.  The  majority  of  these  pronounced 


1 6          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

their  vows  at  the  end  of  a  few  years  ;  but  there 
was  more  than  one  instance  of  lay-sisters  who  had 
returned  to  the  world  after  they  had  passed  years 
in  the  establishment. 

It  was  to  this  class  of  nuns  that  poor  Emma 
affiliated  herself.  Everything  was  commonplace  in 
her  admission,  in  her  noviciate,  in  her  conduct  at 
the  convent.  Tedium  is  a  thing  unknown  to  these 
races  ;  they  dream  too  much  to  feel  bored.  She 
was  a  nun  of  the  utmost  regularity,  pious  like  the 
rest,  never  at  fault,  esteemed  by  her  superiors. 
Her  face,  pale  as  the  white  linen  which  surrounded 
it,  had  the  ordinary  beatific  expression  common  to 
nuns.  Assiduous  in  prayer  and  in  the  exercises  of 
piety,  she  soon  broke  herself  into  the  religious  hab- 
its of  the  cloister.  After  the  lapse  of  a  few  days, 
the  slow  and  monotonous  rocking  effect  of  a  relig- 
ious life  had  lulled  her  to  sleep,  and  her  ordinary 
state  became  a  sort  of  slumber  filled  with  sweet- 
ness. 

Had  she  succeeded  in  chasing  from  her  heart 
the  image  which  had  invaded  it  completely  ?  By 
no  means;  she  had  not  even  tried  to  do  this. 
The  suspicion  that  this  thought  was  sinful  never 
occurred  to  her  for  a  moment.  It  was,  as  in  the  Song 
of  Solomon,  a  bouquet  of  myrrh  in  her  bosom. 
She  would  have  doubted  God  sooner  than  the  up- 
rightness of  the  sentiment  which  filled  her  being. 
In  her,  love  was  in  the  state  of  a  dream,  full  of 
sweetness,  indefinitely  prolonged,  of  a  sweet  music 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  17 

which  had  but  one  note.  There  was  neither  height 
nor  depth  in  this  state  of  profound  peace.  She  did 
not  distinguish  her  love  from  her  piety,  or  her 
piety  from  her  love.  Her  austerities,  especially, 
were  permeated  by  it.  She  found  in  it  an  extreme 
charm.  Feeling,  by  instinct,  that  a  woman  must 
either  enjoy  or  suffer,  she  found  a  sort  of  voluptu- 
ousness in  mortifying  her  flesh.  She  experienced 
a  deep  joy  in  thinking  that  she  suffered  all  this  for 
the  man  whom  she  loved,  and  in  telling  herself  that 
she  should  never  behold  any  other  man  than  he.  Her 
state  of  vague  love  drew  from  the  long  psalmodies 
of  the  convent  a  sort  of  powerful  stimulant  and 
augmentation. 

There  was  joined  to  this  a  sentiment  which  I 
would  like  to  call  the  pride  of  reclusion,  which 
is  the  support  of  a  nun  and  the  cause  of  her 
haughtiness.  Behind  the  dreams  in  which  the  clois- 
tered woman  takes  pleasure,  there  lies  the  idea  that 
her  body  is  a  treasure  so  precious  that  bolts  and 
gratings  and  lofty  walls  are  necessary  to  place  it  in 
security.  The  severity  of  the  guard  adds  to  the 
value  of  the  object  guarded  ;  a  thing  which  is 
watched  over  to  this  extent  must  be  inestimable. 
The  woman  has  the  sentiment  that  she  pleases  by 
her  slightest  act  ;  this  nearly  terrifies  her.  It  is 
not  rare  to  see  extremely  beautiful  women  feel  an 
aversion  for  going  into  society.  The  woman  vowed 
to  celibacy  also  desires,  almost  always,  to  be  se- 
questered and  veiled!  She  experiences  a  sort  of 


18         RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

pleasure  in  proclaiming  thus  loudly  that  she  is 
keeping  to  herself  the  happiness  which  she  might 
bestow.  Signifying  her  disdain  for  men,  and  re- 
serving herself  for  the  caresses  of  an  invisible  and 
jealous  lover,  she  wishes  to  be  sure  that  she  will  be 
seen  only  by  herself  and  God. 

With  these  intimate  delights  there  is  mingled,  in 
discreet  fashion,  a  confession  of  weakness  which 
touches  all  men.  It  pleases  us  that  a  woman  should 
distrust  her  frailty,  that  she  should  take  precautions 
against  herself,  that  she  should  subject  herself  to 
surveillance,  and  thus  implicitly  confess  that,  per- 
haps, if  she  were  not  watched,  she  might  sin.  The 
bold  woman,  who  is  sure  of  herself,  of  certain  mod- 
ern countries,  is  antipathetic  to  us.  We  love  to  feel 
in  a  woman  the  embarrassment  of  her  sex,  that  she 
is  obliged  to  make  an  effort  to  be  virtuous,  that 
she  is  timid,  fearful,  the  vigilant  guardian  of  her 
treasure. 

With  simple-minded  girls,  like  Emma's  compan- 
ions, all  this  was  bathed  in  a  mystical  pathos  of  a 
sufficiently  inoffensive  nature.  With  her  the  case 
was  more  complicated.  Such  was  her  complete 
innocence,  and  the  purity  of  her  imagination,  that 
no  scruple  as  to  her  languors  ever  occurred  to  her. 
She  was  so  certain  of  being  right  that  she  never 
felt  bound  to  accuse  herself  of  it  in  confession. 
Her  peace  was  profound.  The  efforts  usually 
made  by  cloistered  women  to  suppress  the  thoughts 
which  should  not  come  to  thejn,  were  unknown  to 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  \g 

her.  Her  reclusion  was  absolute,  no  man  ever 
came  to  ask  for  her  in  the  parlor.  The  ladies  of 
her  family  found  her  so  detached  from  everything 
that  they  gradually  ceased  to  visit  her. 

This  lasted  for  five  years,  without  a  trouble, 
without  a  storm.  Did  the  possibility  of  finding 
Emilien  again  present  itself,  at  times,  to  her 
mind  ?  Did  it  sometimes  occur  to  her  that  the 
woman  whom  Emilien  had  married  had  very  fee- 
ble health  ?  Since  nothing  which  happened  in 
the  little  town  was  unknown  in  the  convent,  she 
was  aware  that  Anna  had  two  little  daugh- 
ters. Did  her  good  heart,  masking  a  little  touch 
of  egotism,  say  to  her  :  You  will  be  their  mother 
some  day  ?  Perhaps  such  thoughts  did  seek  to 
rise,  now  and  then  ;  but  they  never  acquired  a 
bodily  existence  in  her  mind.  She  was  happy  and 
did  not  desire  that  her  present  state  should  come  to 
an  end.  She  would  have  remained  thus  until  her 
death,  without  a  regret,  without  bitterness  ;  never- 
theless, a  profound  instinct  kept  her  from  pro- 
nouncing her  vows.  Her  superiors  mentioned  the 
subject  to  her  several  times  ;  she  took  refuge  in 
arguments  of  humility.  She  was  so  modest,  in 
fact,  that  this  was  considered  quite  natural  on  her 
part. 

Now,  this  possibility  which  she  had  never  clearly 
perceived,  but  which,  without  her  being  aware  of 
the  fact  herself,  had  been  the  secret  spring  of  her 
unconscious  life,  suddenly  became  a  reality.  Anna 


20          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

M had  a  sister  in  the  house  of  the  Ursulines. 

One  day,  according  to  usage,  prayers  were  asked 
for  the  near  relative  of  one  of  the  ladies  of  the 
community,  who  lay  in  the  death-agony.  Every- 
thing is  very  soon  known  in  convents.  The  name 
of  the  dying  person  was  mentioned  in  Emma's 
presence  that  evening.  The  two  little  girls,  who 
had  no  longer  a  mother,  were  confided  to  their 
aunt  the  nun  ;  Emma  could  caress  them.  On  the 
following  day,  the  tolling  of  the  knell  from  the 
principal  church  announced  the  death  of  poor 
Anna.  Then  came  the  funeral  ;  Emma  followed  all 
the  phases  of  the  mass  by  the  ringing  of  the  bell, 
the  Sanctus,  the  elevation  of  the  host.  A  service 
took  place  at  the  same  hour  in  the  convent. 
Emma  prayed  like  the  others,  with  so  much  ap- 
parent calm  that  the  angels  could  not  have  per- 
ceived that  she  was  praying  for  a  rival. 

Her  trouble  had  begun,  however,  and  when  the 
cathedral  chimes  announced  that  the  coffin  had 
been  lowered  into  the  grave,  she  found  herself  in  a 
state  with  which  she  was  unacquainted.  She  did 
not  recover  herself  ;  she  could  hardly  pray  ;  she 
tried  to  put  on  her  hair  shirt,  and  found  it  unsup- 
portable  ;  the  austerities  which  were  familiar  to 
her  disgusted  her.  She  deprived  herself  of  the 
communion  for  a  week,  her  peace  was  at  an  end, 
her  piety  deeply  shaken.  At  certain  hours,  she 
believed  herself  to  be  an  egoist,  almost  malicious. 
There  was  no  recourse  to  God  ;  she  asked  herself 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  21 

if  she  was  in  a  state  of  grace :  the  Church  no 
longer  possessed  any  consolations  for  her ;  the 
long,  tranquil  meditations  which  had  constituted 
her  delight,  were  interrupted  by  perpetual  distrac- 
tions, which  she  could  not  banish. 

This  was  the  only  dangerous  moment  in  her  life. 
There  was  one  month  when  she  came  near  going 
to  destruction.  Assuredly,  had  not  the  issue  been 
that  which  I  am  about  to  relate,  she  would  have 
rebelled.  She  might,  perhaps,  have  remained  in 
the  convent ;  but  she  would  have  been  a  bad  nun, 
that  is  to  say,  the  very  worst,  and  the  most  un- 
happy thing  in  this  world.  Her  chains,  which  had 
been  so  sweet  to  her  when  enjoyment  had  been 
impossible,  and  while  her  hope  had  been  lost,  had 
become  intolerable  to  her.  The  beloved  image, 
which  had  slumbered  at  the  bottom  of  her  heart 
for  years,  now  rendered  her  distracted,  agitated 
her  mortally. 

This  time,  she  thought  herself  obliged  to  tell 
everything  to  her  confessor,  who  was  the  chaplain 
of  the  convent.  He  was  a  man  of  narrow  mind, 
but  very  sensible.  At  first,  he  wished  to  wait  : 
then  he  saw  the  gravity  of  the  evil.  After  all, 
Emma  had  taken  no  vow,  she  had  not  worn  the 
costume  of  the  order,  the  fillet  had  not  pressed  her 
brow.  The  chaplain  was  kind  of  heart.  The 
secret  of  the  confessional  prevented  his  consulting 
his  bishop.  He  formed  his  opinion  by  his  own 
reason.  Convinced  that  the  salvation  of  his  • 


22          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

spiritual  daughter  was  at  stake,  a  thoroughly 
paternal  thought  occurred  to  him.  He  had  Anna's 
daughters  confided  to  Emma's  personal  care.  He 
hoped,  in  this  manner,  to  furnish  employment  to 
the  uneasiness  which  had  begun  to  take  possession 
of  her  and  to  pour  out  upon  these  orphans  the 
overfullness  of  her  heart.  In  case  the  union  of 
Emma  and  Emilien  should  become  necessary,  he 
intended  to  arrange  matters  so  that  it  might  be 
said  that  everything  had  been  done  at  the  instance 
of  Emilien,  "  desirous  of  procuring  a  second  mother 
for  his  children."  He  hoped  that,  in  this  way,  an 
exposure,  a  scandal,  they  termed  it,  might  be 
avoided. 

The  father  came  to  see  his  little  girls,  and  Emma 
led  them  to  the  parlor.  The  blow  was  terrible  ; 
she  burst  into  tears.  Emilien  had  changed  very 
little,  he  was  such  as  she  had  continued  to  behold 
him  in  her  dreams  during  the  last  five  years.  As 
for  her,  her  body  was  completely  emaciated.  The 
torrent  of  tears  which  inundated  her,  in  spite  of 
herself,  weakened  her ;  in  an  instinctive  movement 
of  her  eyes,  thus  bathed  in  tears,  Emilien  read  her 
love. 

This  man,  of  an  ordinary  mind,  but  really  good, 
was  then  able  to  understand  it  all.  A  flash  of 
lightning  traversed  his  mind,  he  combined  matters 
instantaneously.  As  he  had  a  very  tender  heart, 
he  was  deeply  touched.  The  sight  of  his  little 
girls,  whom  he  loved  greatly,  in  the  arms  of  this 


ERNEST  RENAN.  23 

excellent  woman,  moved  him  to  the  very  depths  of 
his  being.  A  respectful  love  took  possession  of 
him.  The  pious  memory  of  Anna  which  he  pre- 
served was  merged  into  this  new  sentiment  ;  he 
had  never  read  a  romance,  he  was  a  stranger  to 
all  literature,  the  unprecedented  favor  which 
Heaven  had  sent  to  him  did  not  inspire  him  for  a 
moment  with  fatuity. 

Some  months  later  Emma  and  Emilien  were 
united  in  marriage.  That  which  no  one  had  ever 
seen,  everyone  beheld.  It  was  the  entire  country 
which  married  them.  Emma  was  much  beloved 
for  her  goodness.  Public  opinion,  ordinarily  un- 
favorable to  nuns  who  leave  their  convent,  was 
very  indulgent  to  her.  By  means  of  little  artifices 
of  coiffure,  which  were  not  lacking  in  grace,  they 
concealed  her  hair,  which  had  fallen  under  the 
scissors  of  the  convent  ;  her  bosom,  compressed 
by  austerities,  dilated  ;  she  resumed  her  four-and- 
twenty  years.  People  were  enchanted  to  see  her 
once  more  ;  they  had  thought  her  buried  forever. 

My  sister  considered  that  the  joy  experienced 
by  this  heroine  of  faithful  love  was  the  greatest 
that  ever  the  heart  of  woman  felt.  Her  passion, 
silent  for  the  space  of  five  years,  and  doubled  by 
suffering,  had  become  a  part  of  her  being.  The 
rest  of  her  life,  there  was  never  the  least  dim- 
inution in  her  love,  that  is  to  say,  in  her  happi- 
ness. The  state  in  which  she  had  been  during  the 
five  years  that  she  had  passed  in  the  convent,  and 


24          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

which  was  so  violently  disturbed  by  the  knell  an- 
nouncing the  death  of  her  rival,  lasted  the  whole 
time,  without  a  single  cloud. 

Her  husband,  sustained  by  so  marvelous  a 
proof  of  fidelity,  was  constantly  under  the  impres- 
sion of  a  tender  and  passionate  sentiment.  The 
law  of  their  union  was  that  which  was  on  the  wed- 
ding-ring  of  Saint  Louis  : 

"  Outside  this  ring  can  there  be  love  ?  " 

Emilien.in  spite  of  his  mediocrity,  was  conscious 
of  the  incomparable  treasure  which  Heaven  had 
bestowed  upon  him.  His  love  became  a. sort  of 
religious  worship.  The  trial  had  been  unique, 
superhuman.  This  iron  resolution :  "  No  one 
shall  see  me  except  he,"  proved  by  the  most  incon- 
trovertible facts,  though  far  surpassing  the  capac- 
ity of  his  own  nature,  astonished  him,  conquered 
him,  inspired  him  with  a  sort  of  fear,  like  some- 
thing mysterious. 

With  her,  that  which  dominated  all  else  was  the 
sentiment  of  an  enormous  triumph.  "  I  have  con- 
quered," was  the  thought  which  ruled  her  life. 
The  memory  of  the  Ursuline  convent  always  re- 
mained dear  to  her.  She  returned  thither  every 
year,  to  spend  a  few  days.  Her  piety  was  not 
founded  on  reasoning,  and  was,  therefore,  not  very 
aggressive.  She  wished  to  preserve  her  con- 
ventual costume  in  a  wardrobe.  In  her  bedroom, 
her  nun's  scourge  was  suspended  on  a  nail ;  she 
often  reminded  her  husband  of  what  she  had  suf- 


ER.VEST  RENAN.  25 

fered  for  him,  and  how,  for  five  years,  she  had 
combated  her  flesh  to  preserve  her  love  ;  with  his 
permission,  she  wore  her  haircloth  garment  on  cer- 
tain days.  Thus  she  enjoyed,  without  a  moment's 
intermittance,  the  most  perfect  felicity  that  can  be 
imagined.  She  had  risked  much.  All  the  chances 
had  been  that  the  cloister  would  wear  her  out,  that 
Anna  would  survive  her.  That  had  not  stopped 
her.  The  voluptuousness,  which  had  been  re- 
pressed for  five  years,  flowed  freely.  For  twenty- 
five  years  she  floated  on  a  Pacific  Ocean  of 
happiness  and  love. 

They  had  eight  children,  from  whom  they  never 
separated  the  two  daughters  of  poor  Anna.  They 
reared  them  well  ;  their  sons  were  very  honest 
fellows.  As  neither  of  them  had  any  intellectual 
cleverness,  not  the  slightest  literary  subtlety,  not 
the  slightest  mental  reservation  ever  attacked  their 
sincerity.  People  never  read  anything,  happily, 
in  these  remote  districts  ;  the  literary  malady,  that 
moral  phylloxera  of  our  day,  has  not  penetrated 
thither.  Love  was  all  the  time  like  a  powerful  dose 
of  idealistic  morphine  injected  beneath  their  flesh. 

They  lived  an  extremely  retired  life,  in  the 
depths  of  a  somber  manor,  situated  in  a  valley 
near  the  sea,  in  the  middle  of  a  dense  forest  of 
beeches.  These  manors,  if  one  confine  one's  self 
to  the  exterior,  have  the  air  of  sepulchers  ;  one 
would  pronounce  them  the  strongholds  of  despair. 
Beware  !  inside  they  are  full  of  sweet  familiarities, 


26          RECOLLECTIOXS  AXD  LETTERS  OF 

of  amiable  privacies.  The  little  gardens,  cut  by 
walls  which  surround  them,  are  the  image  of  the 
intimate  life  that  is  led  there.  The  pond  which 
feeds  the  feudal  mill  causes  a  certain  shudder,  at 
first ;  then  you  acquire  a  love  for  the  intense  ver- 
dure of  its  osier  beds,  its  surface  concealed  beneath 
water-lilies. 

It  was  in  one  of  these  nests  of  verdure,  closed  in 
on  every  side,  and  bathed  in  shade,  that  Emma 
and  Emilien  passed  their  life.  At  the  end  of  a 
few  years,  people  forgot  their  history.  Hardly 
anyone  knew  them.  Great  love  loves  solitude ; 
it  needs  no  one.  Emma's  life  in  this  desert  was 
that  of  paradise,  an  infinite  enjoyment,  without 
oscillation  or  slackening.  People  talk  of  the 
storms  of  love.  What  childishness  !  Love  has  its 
inequalities :  but  voluptuousness  has  no  storms. 
Emma's  happiness,  after  her  victory,  was  like 
the  high  seas,  without  ebb  or  flood,  whereon  she 
floated  wrapped  in  a  slumber.  Death  itself  hardly 
existed  for  her.  Life  left  her  because  the  hour 
had  come  to  finish  it.  She  died  at  the  age  of  fifty, 
without  any  malady.  These  great  and  durable 
joys  vanish  without  causing  any  bitterness.  To 
St.  Augustine  is  attributed  this  saying  as  to  the 
happiness  of  the  elect  :  Quod  habent  desiderant — 
"  They  desire  that  which  they  have."  It  is  very 
well  said  ;  but  we  must  remember  that  this  acme 
of  bliss  is  conquered  only  by  an  excess  of  heroic 
will,  exercised  for  a  very  long  time. 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  27 

My  sister,  in  narrating  to  me  this  story,  dis- 
covered in  it  a  perfect  example  of  love,  as  she 
understood  it.  She  esteemed  Emilien  the  happiest 
of  men,  he  for  whose  sake  an  excellent  woman  had 
condemned  herself  to  a  life  of  austerity,  thus  giv- 
ing him  the  absolute  guarantee  of  her  exclusive 
love.  In  the  space  of  five  years,  she  had  never  be- 
held a  single  man.  She  had  accepted  loyally  the 
chances  of  an  eternal  seclusion.  As  in  all  battles, 
life  was  at  stake  here.  There  is  no  recompense 
except  for  those  who  dare.  Happiness  is  like 
glory  ;  in  order  to  win  it  one  must  play  for  large 
stakes. 

One  day  I  ventured  to  remark  to  my  sister  that 
this  was  a  great  deal  of  devotion  to  bestow  on  a 
mediocre  man.  "  Oh  !  what  matters  it  ?  "  she 
replied.  "  He  certainly  did  not  merit  so  much 
happiness  ;  but  who  does  merit  the  happiness  that 
he  has  ?  These  are  the  false  ideas  of  your  Parisian 
literary  men,  who  imagine  that  great  men  alone 
are  worthy  of  love.  What  childishness  !  You 
will  perceive  the  absurdity  of  all  that  one  of  these 
days.  Ah  !  the  heroes  who  have  saved  their 
country,  I  can  conceive  of  it  for  them  ;  but  the 
daubers  of  canvas,  the  smudgers  of  paper,  what  is 
there  in  that  for  the  heart?  What  are  your  puerile 
literary  celebrities  for  love  ?  "  She  often  recurred 
to  this  point.  She  was  much  opposed  to  the 
foolish  admiration  of  fame,  which  is  one  of  the 
absurdities  of  our  time,  and  thought  it  ridiculous 


28          RECOLLECTIONS  A.\D  LETTERS  OF 

that  a  woman  should  set  any  store  by  reputation, 
for  her  husband.  She,  who  was  so  little  given  to 
mockery,  rallied  wittily  those  women  who  seek  the 
men  who  pretend  to  superiority.  She  would  have 
none  of  those  husbands  who  belong  to  everybody. 
She  thought  that  the  woman  who  marries  a  cele- 
brated man  is  only  half  a  wife,  the  public  entering 
more  or  less  into  their  union  as  a  third  party.  It 
is  certain  that  the  dilectus  meus  milii  et  ego  illi — my 
beloved  is  mine  and  I  am  his — of  the  Song  of  Solo- 
mon, would  have  had  no  meaning  if  the  shepherd 
of  Sulem  had  been  a  well-known  personage, 
delivered  over  to  be  pastured  on  by  the  public,  and 
interviewed  every  morning  by  journalists. 

How  I  should  like  to  have  someone  write  thus 
a  "  Morality  in  Action  "  of  virtuous  love,  where 
should  be  recounted,  in  simple  style,  heroic  in- 
stances, like  that  of  Emma !  The  "  Morality  in 
Action"  was  the  book  which  had  the  most  influ- 
ence over  me  in  my  childhood,  after  "Telemaque," 
however.  They  say  that  these  sorts  of  books 
are  out  of  fashion  now  ;  so  much  the  worse  for 
fashion.  I  imagine  that  the  great  success  of  the 
century  would  be  a  book  which  should  depict  for 
us  men  such  as  they  ought  to  be  ;  we  have  but  too 
many  occasions  to  see  them  as  they  are. 

Certainly,  a  distinction  must  be  made  between 
what  we  propose  to  imitate  and  what  we  propose 
to  admire.  The  examples  for  imitation  should 
always  have  something  mediocre  and  plebeian 


ERNEST  RENAN.  29 

about  them,  since  practice  is  plebeian.  But  in 
order  to  obtain  from  men  their  simple  duty,  they 
must  be  shown  the  example  of  those  who  exceed 
it.  Morals  are  maintained  by  heroes.  Feminine 
virtue  is  one  of  the  providential  elements  in  the 
edifice  of  the  world.  The  woman  has  charge  of 
good.  The  true  does  not  concern  her  in  the  least, 
but  the  proof  of  morals  lies  much  more  in  the  eyes 
of  the  honest  young  girl  than  in  the  reasoning  of 
a  metaphysician. 

This  is  what  always  impels  me,  in  my  moments 
of  leisure,  to  meditate  upon  the  most  sacred  of  the 
acts  of  life  ;  this  is  what  makes  me  find  so  much 
pleasure  in  those  grand  examples  of  noble  love, 
where  love  and  duty  are  opposed  one  to  the  other, 
and  where  they  grow  reciprocally.  The  profana- 
tion which  is  made  of  love  in  the  superficial  litera- 
ture of  Paris  is  the  disgrace  of  our  times.  That  is 
the  crime  against  the  Holy  Spirit,  for  which,  ac- 
cording to  the  Gospel,  there  is  no  forgiveness.  The 
sacred  wafer  is  dragged  through  the  mud,  the 
great  educating  force  of  the  human  race  is  misun- 
derstood. Love  does  not  possess  its  full  value, 
except  under  the  restrictions  of  duty.  There  is  no 
part  of  life  which  imposes  more  obligations,  nor 
which  is  subjected  to  more  complicated  rules. 

Restricted  ideas  must  correspond  to  restricted 
duties.  The  faith  of  woman  is  a  virtue  ;  it  must  be 
respected,  like  all  other  feminine  virtues.  People 
will  be  mistaken  if  thev  think  that  we  desire  to 


30          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

lead  women  to  our  philosophical  opinions.  Often, 
on  the  contrary,  we  are  very  glad  that  they  do  not 
listen  to  us.  We  love  their  decided  intention  not 
to  hear  what  will  enfeeble  their  heroic  resolution. 
It  is  sufficient,  if  we  may  suppose  that,  by  a  little 
dissimulation,  they  agree  with  us  at  bottom. 

Woman  often  pleases  us  precisely  because  she 
resists  us ;  we  are  grateful  to  her  for  her  refusal. 
The  woman  who  resembles  us  is  antipathetic  to  us. 
What  we  seek  in  the  other  sex  is  the  contrary 
of  ourselves.  Weakness,  false  reasoning^  narrow 
ideas,  ignorance,  superstition,  shock  us  in  a  man, 
and  often  cause  us  to  smile  in  a  woman.  We  love 
the  sign  of  the  cross  executed  with  a  graceful  fem- 
inine gesture.  It  does  not  displease  us  to  see  our 
virile  works  insulted,  misunderstood  by  women  ; 
their  indignation  enchants  us,  for  we  descry  the 
delicate  sentiment  where  their  scorn  has  its  origin, 
and  that  troubles  us  but  little,  since,  through 
science,  we  are  sure  of  being  in  the  right. 

I  envy  my  eminent  colleague,  Mr.  Brown- 
Sequard,  for  what  happened  to  him  at  one  of  his 
learned  lessons.  An  anti-vivisectionist  lady,  placed 
near  him,  gave  him  a  blow  with  her  umbrella. 
Telum  imbelle  ! — an  unwarlike  weapon.  This  excel- 
lent person  certainly  made  a  mistake  ;  vivisection, 
with  the  humane  cares  by  which  it  is  surrounded, 
representing  the  decillionth  part  of  that  which  ani- 
mals suffer,  is  a  very  inoffensive  thing,  but  errors  of 
the  heart  please  us  in  women.  The  wrath  which 


ERNEST  RENAN.  31 

our  legitimate  liberties  cause  them  proves  that  to 
which  we  cling  the  most  strongly  in  them  ;  their 
virtue — an  essential  condition  of  their  charm  and 
of  the  absolute  dissonance  which  we  desire  be- 
tween them  and  us.  We  love  feminine  absurdity, 
while  still  not  wishing  that  it  should  govern  the 
world  and  make  the  law  too  much  therein. 

However,  God's  will  be  done  in  everything ! 
The  world  is  good  as  it  is  ;  I  should  be  desperately 
sorry  to  have  contributed  in  any  way  to  diminish 
piety  in  women.  Pietas,  in  its  finest  Latin  sense, 
implying  feebleness  and  tenderness,  is  the  excellent 
gift  that  has  been  conferred  upon  them.  During 
my  last  journey  to  Brittany,  I  was  happy  to  see 
that  the  young  girls  were  as  pretty,  as  modest,  as 
well-brought  up  as  they  were  fifty  years  ago.  My 
sole  desire  is  that  it  may  continue  so.  I  should  be 
consoled  if  I  could  know,  after  my  death,  that 
women  are  still  as  pretty,  and  that  love  is  still  as 
sweet  as  in  the  past. 

In  order  to  save  the  possibility  of  a  future  be- 
yond the  grave,  many  lofty  minds  dream  of  a  series 
of  new  births,  with  profound  modifications  of  our 
being.  This  order  of  ideas  is  not  that  in  which  I 
take  pleasure  ;  metempsychosis  is  the  idea  which 
has  always  had  the  fewest  attractions  for  me. 
Nevertheless,  if  anything  in  the  nature  of  these 
dreams  were  conceivable,  I  should  request,  as  the 
recompense  for  my  head  work,  to  be  born  again  a 
woman,  in  order  that  I  might  study  the  two  fash- 


32          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

ions  of  living  which  the  Creator  has  instituted,  so 
that  I  might  comprehend  the  two  poetries  of  the 
thing.  I  really  have  reasoned  and  combined  a 
good  deal  in  that  manner.  I  should  like,  in  an- 
other world,  to  speak  to  the  feminine  element,  with 
the  voice  of  a  woman,  to  think  as  a  woman,  to  love 
as  a  woman,  to  pray  as  a  woman,  to  see  how 
women  reason.  From  that  world,  I  desire  to  as- 
sure you,  dear  sisters,  that  I  have  never  cherished 
for  you  a  single  evil  sentiment,  that  your  piety  has 
even  frequently  been  one  of  the  causes  of  my  in- 
ward joy.  And  beholding  it  so  assured,  I  have 
said  to  myself  that  my  ideas,  in  so  far  as  they 
might  be  dangerous,  would  speedily  find  their  coun- 
terpoise, and  that,  consequently,  I  can  freely  accord 
them  their  flight. 


SUPPLEMENT    TO    PAGE    I  19   OF  "SOUVENIRS 

D'ENFANCE." 

THE  approach  of  old  age  having  led  me,  several 
years  ago,  to  choose  a  sojourn  for  the  summer  in 
the  vicinity  of  the  spot  where  my  childhood  was 
passed,  I  desired  to  behold  once  more  the  cemetery 

of  where,  according  to  certain  inductions,  I 

knew  that  little  Noe"mi,  the  friend  of  my  youth, 
must  be  buried.  Alas  !  I  did  not  find  her  name 
there.  A  gravestone  had  been,  evidently,  too  costly 
a  luxury  for  her  ;  she  had  only  a  wooden  cross. 


ERNEST  RENAN.  33 

Now,  a  wooden  cross  speedily  falls  to  pieces  :  the 
transverse  strip  which  bears  the  name  of  the  de- 
ceased becomes  loosened  first,  and  the  dead,  whose 
memory  is  preserved  only  by  this  fragile  sign,  soon 
have  no  further  existence,  except  in  the  memory  of 
God. 

That  memory,  being  the  very  reality  of  things,  is 
truly  the  only  one  which  counts.  The  memory  of 
men  is  not  only  brief  but  it  is  inexactness  itself. 
I  have  the  honor  to  be  a  member  of  the  commis- 
sion on  the  Literary  History  of  France,  at  the 
Academy  of  Inscriptions  and  Belles-Lettres.  If 
people  only  knew  the  expungement  of  errors  which 
we  effect  at  each  of  our  sessions,  everyone  would 
become  incredulous  as  to  what  is  said  and  what 
is  related.  The  Last  Judgment,  supposing  that 
the  Eternal  gives  an  opportunity  for  the  interro- 
gation of  witnesses,  will  be  a  tissue  of  iniquities.  A 
certain  incident  opened  my  eyes  to  this  incurable 
weakness  of  human  opinions,  on  one  frightful  day. 

Having  asked  some  information  from  a  person 
whom  I  knew  to  be  well  posted  as  to  my  little  com- 
panion, this  was  the  reply  which  I  received  :  "  Yes, 
she  was  very  pretty,  but  she  turned  out  badly.  Do^ 
not  look  for  her  here.  She  followed  such  and  such 
a  person  ...  he  seduced  her,  then  abandoned  her. 
She  came  to  her  end  on  the  pavements  of  Paris." 
The  person  whom  I  interrogated  added  various 
very  precise  circumstances,  which  seemed  to  leave 
no  doubt  as  to  the  truth  of  her  assertions.. 


34         RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

The  horror  of  a  priest  who  should  behold  his 
holy  sacrament  fall  into  the  mud  would  be  nothing 
compared  to  the  feeling  which  I  experienced  at  that 
moment.  The  thought  that  my  little  friend,  who 
had  opened  to  me  the  paradise  of  the  ideal,  when 
I  was  twelve  years  of  age,  could  have  been  defiled 
to  that  extent,  filled  me  with  indignation.  That 
which  my  mother  had  related  to  me  concerning 
her  pious  death  still  rang  in  my  ears.  I  made  no 
reply  to  my  interlocutor ;  but  I  seated  myself 
under  an  aged  beech,  at  the  corner  of  the  cemetery 
facing  the  sea  ;  I  gathered  my  memories  together  ; 
soon  the  truth  appeared  to  me,  sovereign,  evident, 
with  no  admixture  of  conjecture.  By  dint  of 
placing  side  by  side  certain  particulars  of  the  con- 
versation which  had  just  taken  place,  I  beheld  a 
misunderstanding,  plain  as  the  daylight,  rise  before 
me. 

Noemi  had,  in  fact,  a  little  friend  who  often 
played  with  us  and  who  resembled  her  by  her 
beauty — a  beauty  which  came  to  her  from  the  devil 
in  as  direct  a  line  as  No^mi's  came  to  her  from 
God.  I  shall  call  her  Nera.  Although  the  daugh- 
ter of  a  very  chaste  mother,  Nera  had,  even  in  her 
childhood,  the  manners  of  a  loose  woman.  She 
lost  her  mother  early ;  my  grandmother  took 
charge  of  her  ;  but,  wholly  absorbed  in  her  devo- 
tion, she  was  extremely  weak  where  Nera  was  con- 
cerned. She  did  not  perceive  her  bad  conduct, 
and,  when  my  sister  Henriette  went  to  pass  a  few 


ERNEST  RENAN.  35 

weeks  with  her  grandmother,  of  whom  she  was  very 
fond,  she  felt  a  constant  anguish  of  heart.  Nera 
rendered  her  unhappy,  mocked  at  her  seriousness, 
and  gave  her  to  understand  that,  being  less  pretty 
than  herself,  she  was  fit  only  to  serve  her.  My 
sister,  who  was  excessively  delicate,  suffered  and 
said  nothing.  One  evening,  on  her  return  from 
church,  in  the  depths  of  a  dark  corridor  which  led 
to  the  apartment  occupied  by  my  grandmother,-  she 
received  a  kiss  which  was  not  intended  for  her,  and 
shrieked  loudly.  At  last  poor  Nera  turned  out  in 
the  saddest  possible  way.  One  day,  Henriette  and 
I  received  a  visit  from  her,  in  the  Rue  Val-de- 
Grace.  Although  greatly  abased,  she  had  an  air 
of  hatred.  Henriette  forgot  her  repugnance,  and 
did  all  that  was  possible  to  save  her.  But  her 
kindness  only  irritated  the  unhappy  girl.  Behind 
the  benefactress  she  perceived  the  little  girl  whose 
virtue  she  had  teased.  To  owe  everything  to  her 
laughing-stock  of  former  days  seemed  to  her 
worse  than  hunger.  After  a  while  she  changed 
her  address,  and  we  completely  lost  sight  of  her. 

For  indubitable  reasons,  which  left  no  room  for 
hesitation,  I  finally  perceived  that  a  horrible  con- 
fusion had  been  established,  and  that,  in  the  minds 
of  the  three  or  four  persons  who  may  still  have 
some  lights  on  this  past,  the  memory  of  Nera  has 
been  substituted  for  that  of  Noemi.  A  blunder 
has  charged  a  virtuous  person  with  the  record  of  a 
fallen  woman.  To  tell  the  truth,  this  is  of  no  great 


36          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

consequence  :  in  a  few  years  the  three  or  four  per- 
sons who  remember  Noemi,  and  I  along  with  them, 
will  have  disappeared,  and  all  this  will  be  buried  in 
oblivion,  that  hideous  monster  which  daily  devours 
— O  Heavens,  many  another  error ! 

But  I  make  a  point  of  protesting,  out  of  pure 
love  for  the  truth. 

I  swear  before  God,  in  the  name  of  my  firmest 
and  most  precise  recollections,  in  the  name  of  facts 
and  reasons  which  furnish  me  with  absolute  cer- 
titude, that  an  error  has  been  committed,  that  my 
mother's  version  is  the  true  one,  that  my  little 
friend  died  solely  because  nature  committed  a  mis- 
take, having  made  her  at  once  beautiful,  poor,  and 
discreet.  As  I  have  said,  she  died  of  virtue.  Peo- 
ple saw  her  go  to  church  to  say  her  prayers ;  but 
all  ended  there.  Now  it  lay  in  her  race  to  be  a 
faithful  wife  and  an  excellent  mother,  or  to  die. 
It  was  Nera  who  lent  an  ear  to  bad  counsels  and 
followed  the  path  of  folly.  I  adjure  the  Eternal  to 
be  on  his  guard  against  this  confusion,  if  it  should 
attempt  to  pass  into  the  great  book  which,  it  is  said, 
will  be  produced  on  the  Day  of  Judgment.  I  will 
rise,  if  need  be,  in  the  Valley  of  Jehoshaphat,  to  pro- 
test -against  such  a  monstrosity.  I  wish  that  my 
little  companion  should  be  in  heaven.  It  is  unnec- 
essary to  say,  of  course,  that  I  shall  offer  no  op- 
position if  the  Eternal,  in  his  infinite  indulgence, 
sees  fit  to  pardon  poor  Nera. 


ERNEST  RENAN.  37 


THE  DOUBLE  PRAYER. 

ONE  of  the  finest  religious  spectacles  which  can 
be  contemplated  in  our  day,  is  that  which  the  an- 
cient cathedral  of  Quimper  presents  at  nightfall. 
When  the  shadows  have  filled  the  side  aisles  of  the 
vast  edifice,  the  faithful  of  both  sexes  join  each 
other  in  the  nave,  and  chant  the  evening  prayer  in 
the  Breton  tongue,  to  a  simple  and  touching  rhythm. 
The  cathedral  is  lighted  only  by  two  or  three  lamps  ; 
on  one  side  of  the  nave  are  the  men,  standing,  on 
the  other  the  kneeling  women  form  a  motionless 
sea  of  white  coifs.  The  two  halves  sing  alternately, 
and  the  phrase  begun  by  one  of  the  choirs  is  com- 
pleted by  the  other. 

That  which  they  sing  is  very  beautiful  ;  when  I 
heard  it,  it  seemed  to  me  that,  with  a  few  small 
transpositions,  it  might  be  accommodated  to  all 
states  of  humanity.  Above  all,  it  made  me  dream 
of  a  prayer  which,  by  means  of  slight  variations, 
might  suit  men  and  women  equally. 

Humanity,  in  effect,  by  its  division  into  two  sexes, 
is  a  choir,  where  the  two  sides  respond.  An  attempt 
to  unite  the  prayers  of  the  men  and  the  women  was 
one  of  the  most  successful  undertakings  of  budding 
Christianity.  The  Middle  Ages  also  excelled  in 
this  sometimes  ;  witness  that  English  abbey,  of 
which  my  learned  brother  M.  Haureau  has  spoken.* 

*  Histoire  "  Litteraire  de  la  France,"  t.  xxvii,  p.  32. 


38          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

The  abbey  was  double,  that  is  to  say,  composed 
of  a  convent  for  men  and  a  convent  for  women,  who 
united  in  the  same  church  for  the  canonical  hours. 
A  wall  divided  the  choir  throughout  the  entire 
length,  and  was  sufficiently  high  to  prevent  the 
monks  and  nuns  from  seeing  each  other,  but  not 
sufficiently  so  as  to  prevent  their  voices  from  ming- 
ling. M tints  corpora  non  voces  disjungit — The  wall 
separated  their  bodies,  not  their  voices.  The 
song  which  rises  from  humanity  to  the  Eternal,  to 
be  complete,  should  be  thus  double. 

The  world  will  be  saved  only  when  men  and 
women  shall  pray  together  the  same  prayer,  with 
the  difference  of  tones  which  befits  them. 

Distinct  on  the  level  of  the  earth,  the  prayers 
should  mingle  at  a  certain  altitude  before  mount- 
ing together  to  Heaven.  Thus  the  discordant 
sounds  of  earth,  at  a  certain  height,  are  merged 
into  perfect  accord.  I  am  astonished  that  no 
theologian  should  have  maintained  that  the  prayers 
of  men  and  the  prayers  of  women  are  of  a  different 
quality.  The  two  incenses,  borne  by  the  angels  be- 
fore the  throne  of  the  Eternal,  would  compose,  as 
they  burned,  the  perfect  incense. 

This  is  what  I  believed  that  I  heard  in  the 
chants  of  the  cathedral  of  Quimper,  all  sectarian 
dissent,  and  all  attachment  to  a  particular  dogma, 
being  set  aside  : 


ERNEST   RENAN. 


39 


CHORUS    OF    MEN. 

My  God,  I  believe 
firmly  in  Thy  power 
which  fills  the  world, 
draws  life  from  inert 
masses,  force  from 
fragile  tissues,  genius 
from  a  brain  which  will 
be  dust  to-morrow.  We 
adore  Thee  above  all  in 
our  breast.  We  never 
faint,  and  when  our 
breath  begins  to  weaken, 
we  feel  Thy  presence  by 
the  powerful  return  of 
strength  which  rises  to 
our  hearts. 

The  work  of  genius  is 
Thy  work.  The  labor  is 
ours.  Long  live  labor 
when  we  toil  for  the  uni- 
verse and  for  humanity  ! 
It  pleases  us  to  be  the 
victims  of  a  fine  work, 
which  Thou  wilt  still 
further  perfect.  As- 
suredly, Thou  cloest 
something,  and  Thou 
doest  it  through  us. 
We  are  sure  that  the  la- 
borer for  humanity  will 
one  day  receive  his  re- 
compense. 

Our  arms  have  be- 
come heavy  with  the  heat 
of  the  day.  Why  are  the 


CHORUS    OF    WOMEN. 

My  God,  I  believe 
firmly  in  Thy  goodness, 
which  causes  our  heart 
to  beat,  overflows  in  our 
milk,  fills  our  breasts, 
nourishes  our  little  ones, 
causes  the  tranquil  lan- 
guor of  our  eyes,  feeds 
our  tenderness,  sustains 
our  piety.  We  are  sure 
that  Thy  spirit  is  in  us, 
when  our  breasts  swell  ; 
the  palpitation  of  our 
bosoms  is  Thy  voice. 


Praised  be  Thy  uni- 
verse! It  is  good,  lumi- 
nous, and  great.  Thou 
hast  willed  that  Thy 
justice  should  be  veiled 
like  us.  Be  praised. 
Justice  is  more  difficult 
to  realize  than  goodness, 
we  feel  it.  On  this 
point  we  resign  ourselves 
to  wait.  We  give  Thee 
centuries  to  perfect  Thy 
work.  Count  on  us. 


Our  maternal  cares 
have  been  heavy  to-day. 
Grant  us  strength  to  be 


RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 


burdens  for  us,  the  en- 
enjoyments  for  others  ? 
We  have  committed  no 
sin  ;  and  we  dare  not 
say  that  Thy  power  is 
limited.  If  there  was 
before  Thee  a  god  of 
evil,  Thou  wouldst  have 
annihilated  him  long 
ago. 

Grant  us  the  strength 
to  conquer  our  wrath. 
When  we  abandon  our- 
selves to  our  frivolous 
thoughts,  we  are  irritated 
at  the  happiness  of  the 
wicked,  at  the  prosperity 
of  the  unjust.  In  Thy 
light  all  is  explained  to 
us.  The  liberty  of  be- 
ings demands  that  Thou 
shouldst  abandon  them 
to  their  inequality.  Oh, 
how  dear  is  the  cost 
of  liberty.  Blessed  be 
Thou,  nevertheless,  for 
having  given  it  to  us. 


Console  us  poor 
victims  ;  a  God  is  made 
of  our  tears.  The 
wicked  are  necessary. 
Our  poverty  is  the  proof 


resigned.  Thou  lovest 
us,  yea,  Thou  lovest  us  ; 
for  Thou  hast  need  of  us. 
Thy  aim  is  life.  We  are 
the  instruments  in  Thy 
hand,  for  the  most 
beautiful  of  Thy  works. 
Wilt  Thou  not  have  pity 
one  day  upon  Thy  poor 
toiler  in  bringing  forth 
life? 

Our  trials  are  some- 
times severe.  Long  are 
our  fevers  when  one  of 
Thy  little  creatures  is 
suspended  in  our  bosom, 
by  long  threads  of  silk. 
The  recompense  of  our 
virtue  is  poverty.  Our 
repose  is  the  tomb.  Our 
milk  is  for  little  chil- 
dren decked  out  like 
idols,  who  are  not  our 
own.  Our  heart  swells 
with  indignation  at 
times ;  but  Thou  calm- 
est us ;  Thou  art  the 
only  consoler.  Peace, 
happiness,  repose,  will 
never  exist,  save  at  Thy 
feet. 

Yea,  an  hour  passed 
with  Thee  gives  us 
peace.  Here  Thou 
communicatest  to  us 
Thy  secrets.  Thou 


EXNEST  REN  AN. 


that  we  have  never  done 
any  evil.  The  wicked 
man  cannot  be  an  hour 
alone  with  himself.  Our 
Father  who  art  in 
heaven,we  are  with  Thee 
every  hour,  for  Thou  art 
in  our  heart  above  all. 


The  triumph  of  evil 
shall  never  shake  us. 
We  will  always  admit 
duties  which  reach  unto 
death.  Oh,  great  coun- 
try of  souls,  Thou  hast  a 
right  to  all  sacrifices. 
Yes,  death,  if  it  presents 
itself  in  Thy  name,  will 
be  as  gladly  welcomed  by 
us  as  life.  When  one 
knows  Thee,  an  hour  of 
life  is  a  blessing.  Every 
creature  who  is  conscious 
of  its  own  existence  and 
of  Thy  existence  should 
return  thanks  and  die 
blessing  Thee. 

The  courage  which 
was  in  the  heart  of  our 
fathers  is  in  our  heart. 
It  is  the  coward  who 
does  not  believe  in  Thee. 
When  one  has  lived,  one 
lives  always  ;  an  eternal 


solacest  us,  Thou 
makest  us  proud  of  our 
poverty.  Surely,  the 
wicked  man  is  punished, 
for  he  cannot  converse 
with  Thee.  Thanks  for 
the  lot  that  has  been 
assigned  to  us.  Thou 
has  willed  the  world — the 
world  is  made  of  our 
tears. 

Yea,  O  God,  we  will 
be  faithful.  Do  what 
Thou  wilt,  we  will  never 
doubt  Thee.  We  defy 
Thee,  beloved  God  !  It 
shall  be  a  battle  between 
us !  Thou  shalt  not 
conquer.  Demand,  de- 
mand ever,  we  will 
always  give.  Our  heart 
is  ready.  Strike,  make 
Thy  hand  heavier  yet ; 
it  shall  always  be  gentle 
to  us. 


Come,  abuse  our 
patience,  try  of  what  we 
are  capable.  We  will 
endure  every  test.  Thou 
hast  need  of  our  devo- 
tion, we  know  it.  Thou 
canst  not  keep  Thy  uni- 


RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 


mark  has  been  traced  in 
the  infinite.  Whether 
this  furrow  be  long  or 
short,  what  is  it  in  com- 
parison with  Thy  eter- 
nity ?  Thou  remem- 
berest  us  ;  hence  we  are 
immortal. 


The  goal  attained  wilt 
Thou  restore  life  to 
those  who  have  contrib- 
uted to  the  victory  of 
the  good  and  the  true  ? 
Thou  alone  knowest : 
we  must  not  know  it. 
Is  it  not  enough  that  we 
should  live  in  Thy  mem- 


ory 


Assuredly,      we 


would  wish  to  learn  the 
issue  of  the  battle  which 
we  are  fighting  with 
Thee.  Be  the  conqueror, 
O  God  !  that  is  the  es- 
sential point.  We  shall 
triumph  in  Thee. 


Thy  rule  has  been  to 
create  reason  by  ob- 
scure aspirations  for  ex- 
ist(5nce?  to  create  giants 


verse  in  motion  without 
us.  Behold  Thy  poor 
handmaidens  on  their 
knees.  Continue  to  de- 
mand from  us  much,  as 
much  as  thoii  wilt.  It 
is  so  sweet  to  be  a 
victim  !  Thanks,  O 
Heaven,  for  our  weak- 
ness !  Thanks,  for  the 
confidence  Thou  hast  in 
our  powers  of  suffering  ! 

As  Thou  givest  us 
life,  so  we  love  Thee. 
Yes,  we  should  like  to 
live,  to  be  beautiful  for- 
ever. O  Father,  par- 
don the  blindness  of 
Thy  poor  handmaidens. 
Thy  gifts  are  so  excel- 
lent that  we  would  wish 
them  to  be  eternal. 
Foolish  creatures  that 
we  are.  Let  us  reflect 
on  what  we  are  asking  : 
eyes  which  preserve 
their  charm  indefinitely, 
hair  which  never  turns 
white,  lips  fresh  through 
a  thousand  years.  O 
Father,  pardon  our 
childish  egotism  ! 

The  beauty  which 
Thou  givest  us  at  cer- 
tain hours,  and  during  a 
few  years,  is  a  fragile 


ERNEST  RE  NAN. 


43 


with  decillions  of  mi- 
crobes, to  make  some- 
thing coherent  of  gnats. 
Thy  means  are  humble  ; 
Thy  results  attain  to  the 
infinite.  The  earth 
weighed,  the  heavens 
measured,  the  atom  de- 
scribed, what  marvels. 
When  the  plant-louse 
has  finished  its  work, 
dost  Thou  preserve  it 
for  eternity  ?  It  would 
be  a  great  honor  to  Thee 
to  show  it.  It  is  more 
probable  that  it  goes  to 
take  its  place  among  the 
myriads  of  its  congeners 
which  pave  the  infinite. 
We  are  making,  stitch 
by  stitch,  a  tapestry  of 
which  we  do  not  see  the 
pattern.  Let  us  accept 
the  salary  of  good  work- 
men and  spend  it  in 
peace. 


We  thank  Thee  for 
the  life  that  has  been 
given  us,  and  we  do  not 
fear  death,  since  we  are 
delivered  from  the 
frightful  thought  that 
after  having  SQ  tried 


thing.  Truly,  we  can- 
not regret  it.  That 
which  passes  away  is 
not,  for  that  reason,  friv- 
olous. What  difference 
will  there  be  a  century 
hence,  between  those 
who  are  beautiful  to-day, 
and  those  who  have  been 
beautiful  ?  Others  will 
then  be  beautiful,  and 
they  will  pass  in  their 
turn.  Of  what  has  the 
flower  to  complain? 
Thou  alone  art  always 
the  same,  and  Thy  years 
know  no  decline. 


Subordinated  to  Thy 
ends,  we  shall  always  be 
good,  docile,  and  sub- 
missive. We  will  love 
men  and  we  will  serve 
them.  We  will  banish 
from  their  minds  sad 
thoughts,  at  need,  we 
will  talk  nonsense  to 
them. 

Kneeling  before  Thy 
goodness,  we  shall  al- 
ways be  Thy  obedient 
daughters.  What  Thy 
designs  exact,  we  will 
accomplish,  with  a  hum- 
ble heart,  We  abdicate 


44 


RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 


us  in  life,  Thou  wilt 
pass  Thy  eternity  in  tor- 
turing us.  The  fu- 
ture will  behold  better 
days  than  ours  ;  as, 
in  our  age,  we  have 
been  more  favored  than 
our  fathers  were.  But 
each  one  of  us  is  in- 
separable from  the  state 
of  the  universe,  at  the 
moment  when  he  made 
his  appearance.  Happy 
is  he,  who,  in  the  final 
review,  shall  find  him- 
self on  the  side  of 
those  who  have  fought 
for  the  true  and  the 
good  ! 


forever  every  virile 
thought.  Knowing  that 
that  which  pleases  in  us 
is  Thyself,  our  only 
thought  shall  be  to 
please  Thee.  We  will 
cultivate  our  beauty, 
which  exists  by  Thy 
will  ;  and,  associating  it 
indissolubly  with  the 
idea  of  virtue,  we  will 
assure  the  triumph  of 
good  by  the  charm 
which  is  exhaled  from 


SPEECH  DELIVERED  AT  THE  INAUGURATION 
OF  THE  STATUE  OF  BRIZEUX  AT  LORI- 
ENT,  SEPTEMBER  9,  1 888. 

YOUR  festival  is  really  charming,  gentlemen. 
You  have  had  a  happy  inspiration.  You  have  de- 
sired that  one  of  your  most  dainty  poets  should  not 
be  left  without  a  memorial  in  his  native  town.  A 
simple,  elegant  monument,  in  the  best  taste,  will  re- 
call  to  you,  every  day,  this  tender  soul,  this  excellent 
man,  who  was  born  and  grew  up  among  you,  and 
who,  better  than  anyone  else,  has  revealed  to  the 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  45 

world  the  dearest  thoughts,  the  most  secret  re- 
cesses of  the  conscience  of  your  race,  the  deepest 
secrets  of  your  manner  of  feeling.  His  life,  which 
was  modest  and  poorly  recompensed,  certainly  had 
a  right  to  this  reparation.  Brittany  was  behind- 
hand with  Brizeux.  Thanks  to  you,  this  appear- 
ance of  ingratitude  is  effaced.  He  who  said  : 
"  And  I  have  not  even  an  assured  retreat,"  now 
has  his  pedestal  of  granite,  whence  he  invites  us  to 
contemplate  with  him  the  sea,  the  sky,  the  infinite  ; 
the  mysteries  of  the  soul,  which  are  never  to  be 
exhausted. 

It  has  been  said  that  Brizeux  discovered 
Brittany.  That  is  saying  too  much,  perhaps. 
But  he  certainly  did  discover  one  charming  thing, 
among  others — M.  Le  Braz  expressed  it  finely 
<)he  other  day,  in  his  lecture  at  Lannion — he  dis- 
covered Breton  love — love,  discreet,  tender,  pro- 
found, faithful,  with  its  faint  tinge  of  mysticism. 
Two  children  who  seek  to  be  for  hours  together 
without  exchanging  a  word  ;  a  pretty,  rosy  face, 
very  modest,  under  a  white  coif,  nothing  more, 
that  suffices  !  Adorable  simplicity  of  means ! 
Oh  !  how  far  removed  we  are  with  him  from 
that  twaddle,  from  those  perverse  ingredients 
which  certain  schools  think  themselves  obliged  to 
mix  with  the  divine  ambrosia  of  love  !  No  jewels, 
no  adornments  ;  hardly  flowers  ;  color  itself  ren- 
dered useless,  white  and  black  sufficing  to  set 
off  the  freshness  of  a  virginal  complexion. 


46          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

Shall  I  say  it,  in  eulogy  of  this  excellent  artist  ? 
He  hardly  needs  beauty.  Candor  and  innocence 
are  enough. 

"  I  have  seen  Marie,"  said  a  friend  of  Brizeux, 
a  friend  of  his  earliest  years  ;  "  she  was  not  pre- 
cisely pretty  ;  but  there  was  a  singular  grace  about 
her."  Eh!  What  more  is  required  ?  The  effects 
of  beauty  obtained  by  charm,  that  is  the  triumph 
of  Breton  aesthetics,  that  is  the  art  of  Brizeux  :  an 
exquisite  art,  always  healthy,  always  noble,  which 
was  never  troubled  in  its  limpidity  by  any  literary 
malady,  by  any  of  those  ugly  stains  which  soil  the 
purest  works  of  our  day. 

His  poetry  was  simple  because  it  was  true.  He 
loved  life,  with  that  which  rendered  it  supportable, 
the  taste  for  good  under  all  forms.  He  was  not 
of  those  who  boast  of  having  slain  sleep.  In 
order  to  sleep,  he  had  no  need  of  those  narcotics 
which  enervate  more  than  sleeplessness.  In  order 
to  sleep,  he  needed  only  the  shadow  of  an  oak 
tree  on  that  land  "  where  one  can  live  and  die 
alone."  He  had  his  doubts,  sometimes  ;  his 
papers,  scrutinized  after  his  death  by  discreet 
friends,  bear  witness  to  this  ;  he  condemned  the 
sheets  which  contained  them  to  remain  unpub- 
lished. This  touching  verse  is  very  like  him  : 

All  shall  hear  my  voice,  none  shall  behold  my  tears. 

Poetry  and  love,  those  voices  from  another 
world,  never  abandoned  him.  Others  culled  the 


ERNEST  RENAN.  47 

flowers  of  evil ;  he  loved  only  the  flowers  of  good, 
that  which  elevates,  that  which  consoles  this  poor 
humanity,  but  too  much  inclined  to  calumniate  it- 
self. His  ideal  is  a  temple  open  to  all,  and  from 
which  shall  be  excluded  only  "  the  coward  and  the 
wicked  man." 

This  faith  in  good  preserved  him  from  the  great 
modern  errors,  nihilism  and  pessimism.  These 
are  not  precisely  the  maladies  of  our  race.  The 
portion  of  robust  faith  which  is  our  heritage,  even 
reduced  to  clouds,  sustains  us.  We  have  ex- 
hausted nothing  ;  for  we  never  drain  the  cup  to  its 
dregs.  That  is  why  we  are  fresh  for  life  when  so 
many  others  are  weary  of  living.  We  are  not 
obliged  to  convert  ourselves  in  order  to  pass  to 
modern  ideas.  We  transfer  to  them  our  religious 
sincerity,  our  fidelity,  and,  above  all,  that  of  which 
this  century  stands  most  in  need,  our  good  sense, 
our  honesty. 

When  one  is  sure  of  being  in  the  right,  one  is 
gentle  toward  injustice.  Times  were  very,  very 
hard  for  Brizeux.  The  provincial  items  were  not 
accorded,  in  his  day,  so  large  a  freedom  of  the  city 
as  at  present,  in  the  general  literature  of  France. 
Timid,  like  all  Bretons,  Brizeux  sought  to  inaugu- 
rate something  which  had  not  yet  a  place  in  the 
official  sunshine.  He  was  little  understood.  He 
desired  to  belong  to  the  Academy,  and  the  Acade- 
my committed  the  error  of  not  electing  him.  He 
always  remained  poor  ;  but  he  sang  to  the  very 


48          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

end.  The  confidant  of  his  last  hours,  M.  Saint- 
Rene'  Taillandier,  has  related  how  he  died  with  the 
assurance  of  a  great  heart,  content  with  his  work, 
and  proclaiming  loudly  his  aversion  for  phara- 
saisms,  for  all  hypocrisies. 

You  have,  indeed,  done  well,  gentlemen,  to 
crown  with  public  honors  this  life  which  was  so  dis- 
interested, so  lofty,  so  pure!  This  beautiful  place, 
filled  with  the  memory  of  Brizeux,  will  be  for 
our  city  a  place  of  meditation,  a  spot  wherein  to 
dream — the  best  thing  in  the  world — an  dfesis 
in  the  harsh  desert  of  modern  life.  The  positive 
cares  of  our  times  render  poetry  only  the  more 
necessary.  It  is,  with  religion  included  as  a 
matter  of  course,  the  balm  which  softens  and  con- 
soles, the  voice  which  says  within  us  :  Sursum 
corda ! — Lift  up  your  hearts  !  Here  it  will 
have  a  place  that  is,  in  a  manner,  consecrated.  A 
visit  to  this  pretty  square  will  be  the  goal  of  pil- 
grimages, whither  people  will  come  to  seek  repose 
in  the  heat  of  the  day.  The  statue  of  Brizeux  will 
be  for  you  a  sanctuary,  a  signal  of  recall  to  the 
things  of  the  heart  and  of  the  spirit.  You  will 
love  this  place,  and  every  time  that  you  pass  be- 
fore this  noble  image,  you  will  think  of  the  poet 
who  has  put  your  soul  into  his  verses,  you  will 
thank  the  excellent  sculptor  who  has  given  you 
such  a  perfect  image  of  Brizeux. 


ERNEST  REXAN.  49 


LOVE    AND    RELIGION. 

[Letter  to  M.  Perivier,  editor  of  The  Literary  Supplement  of 
"  Figaro."] 

PERROS-GUIREC,  August  4,  1888. 

Dear  Sir  :  You  insist  on  having  my  opinion 
upon  the  charming  competition  which  you  have 
thrown  open  to  your  lady  readers  on  this  question  : 
"Which  book  has  spoken  most  delicately  and  most 
eloquently  of  love  ?  "  You  inform  me  that  a  great 
number  of  your  subscribers  seem  to  have  agreed  to 
reply  :  "  The  Bible,  the  Gospels,  the  Imitation," 
and  you  ask  me  what  I  think  of  this  combination. 
Scoffers  will,  perhaps,  perceive  in  it  a  refinement 
of  hypocrisy,  as  though  your  correspondents  had 
wished  to  prove  thereby  that  they  read  no  other 
books.  This  objection  would  have  but  little  effect 
on  me  ;  for  I  confess  that  I  love  the  women  whose 
mass-book  constitutes  their  whole  literature,  pro- 
vicled  that,  in  addition,  they  be  good  or  beautiful  ; 
but  let  us  leave  epigrams  out  of  the  discussion  ;  I 
will  examine  the  question,  since  you  desire  it,  with 
all  the  impartiality  of  a  conscientious  juror. 

I  think  that  the  clever  readers  who  have  replied 
thus  to  your  question  have  replied  well.  In  their 
determination  to  cite  only  religious  books,  there 
lies  a  great  truth — it  is  the  fundamental  identity  of 
religion  and  love.  Yes,  the  Bible  and  the  Gospels, 
wonderful  books  in  so  many  respects,  are  particularly 


5°          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LEISTERS  OF 

remarkable  from  the  manner  in  which  the  relations 
of  the  sexes  are  handled  in  them.  The  life  of  the 
great  evangelical  charmer  is,  at  every  step,  a  box 
on  the  ear  administered  to  pharisees,  either  of  the 
libertine  camp  or  the  rigorist  camp.  The  role  of 
Mary  of  Magdala,  in  the  formation  of  the  belief  in 
the  resurrection,  is  the  acme  and  really  the  miracle 
of  love. 

In  that  great  compilation  which  is  called  the 
Bible,  we  make  distinctions  which  your  charming 
subscribers  are  quite  right  in  ignoring.  The  deli- 
cious idyls,  which  will  always  maintain  the  Bible  in 
an  incomparable  rank  among  books,  are  found  in 
those  portions  of  the  ancient  recitals  which  proceed 
from  a  certain  narrator,  who  is  almost  always  easily 
to  be  recognized.  He  is  the  author  of  the  beau- 
tiful pages  in  Genesis,  wherein  is  depicted  the 
grandiose  Jehovah  who  creates  the  world,  then  re- 
pents ;  who  perceives  plainly  that  the  sole  means  to 
reform  humanity  is  to  destroy  it,  and  who,  never- 
theless,  after  his  failure  in  the  matter  of  the 
Deluge,  resolves  to  allow  it  to  follow  its  own  course 
in  the  future.  This  pessimist  of  genius,  the  inven- 
tor of  original  sin,  is  especially  admirable  in  every, 
thing  .which  concerns  woman's  part  in  human  af- 
fairs. When  he  attacks  this  subject,  he  is  profound, 
tender,  mysterious.  His  terrible  giant  of  a  Je- 
hovah occupies  himself  with  marriages,  interests 
himself  in  lovers.  It  is  to  this  philosopher,  gloomy 
as  Schopenhauer  or  M.  Hartmann,  that  we  are 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  5! 

indebted  for  the  patriarchal  idyls  of  Isaac  and 
Rebecca,  of  Jacob  and  Rachel.  It  is  he  who 
shows  us,  in  the  dim  distance,  the  sons  of  God 
perceiving  that  the  daughters  of  men  were  fair,  and 
quite  at  the  beginning  of  things,  it  is  he  who  re- 
lates to  us  how  the  woman  was  drawn  from  the 
side  of  the  man — the  most  beautiful  myth  which 
exists  in  any  religion  ;  the  primitive  nudity,  at  which 
the  inhabitants  of  Eden  did  not  blush  ;  the  modesty 
which  is  born  with  sin,  the  broad  leaves  of  the 
Indian  fig  tree  serving  to  veil  their  first  shame  ; 
then  that  garment  of  skins  in  which  Jehovah,  a 
costumer  of  the  Michael  Angelo  pattern,  clothes  the 
exiles  with  his  own  hands. 

The  book  of  Ruth  is  of  the  same  school.  No 
one  is  so  tender  as  the  austere  man.  All  these  old 
fables  are  marvels  of  grandeur,  of  sober  and  firm 
design,  without  any  of  those  literary  reticences  which 
spoil  everything.  For  my  part,  I  cannot  read  it 
without  tears.  And  certainly,  I  am  also  very  fond 
of  that  touching  anonymous  person,  that  old  monk 
arrived  at  the  perfection  of  wisdom,  who  wrote  in 
the  "Imitation"  the  perfect  rule  of  love:  Ama 
nesciri — Love  to  be  ignorant. 

If  I  had  taken  part  in  your  competition,  de- 
scending to  more  human  regions  without  emerging 
from  mysticism,  I  might,  perhaps,  have  added  to 
these  almost  divine  books,  several  grand  works  of 
Christian  genius  ;  for  example,  the  "Confessions  of 
Saint  Augustine,"  the  "  Introduction  to  the  Life  of 


52          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

Devotion,"  of  St.  Francois  cle  Sales.  What 
enchanting  books  !  Especially  the  "  Introduction  !  " 
I  have  it  not  at  hand  here.  But  I  recall  the  chap- 
ter on  the  love  of  wedded  pairs  as  one  of  the  most 
charming  pages  in  existence.  The  holy  bishop 
has  a  peculiar  system  for  conjugal  love  ;  he  thinks 
that,  marriage  being  in  itself  a  heavy,  disagreeable 
thing,  filled  with  duties — in  short  a  purgatory — 
the  Eternal  in  his  infinite  goodness  has  added  to 
it  a  special  sweetness,  which  one  may  enjoy  with 
all  quietness  of  conscience,  since  it  is  the  com- 
pensation for  a  chain  which  is  otherwise  extremely 
unpleasant. 

Thus  Abimelech,  King  of  Gerar,  receiving 
in  his  states  Isaac  and  Rebecca,  "  the  chastest 
married  pair  in  all  the  Old  Testament,"  who  gave 
themselves  out  as  brother  and  sister,  speedil" 
recognized  the  fact  that  they  were  something  quite 
different.  As  he  walked  in  the  evening  through 
the  streets  of  Gerar,  he  divined  the  truth,  from  the 
manner  in  which  they  smiled  at  each  other.  The 
commentary  of  Francois  de  Sales  on  this  narrative 
is  a  masterpiece  of  delicacy  and  worldly  irony, 
relieved  by  extreme  goodness.  Nevertheless,  is 
the  reasoning  of  the  sainted  bishop  very  conclu- 
sive, and  is  the  compensatory  plan  of  the  Eternal 
as  evident  as  he  thinks  ?  We  may  certainly  dis- 
pute this.  For,  in  short,  if  pleasure  had  not  been 
devised  by  God  to  render  marriage  endurable,  we 
must  conclude  that  it  does  not  exist  outside  of 


ERNEST  RENAN.  53 

marriage.  Now,  the  holy  bishop  does  not  dare  go 
so  far  as  that,  and  it  appears,  from  this  point  on, 
that  his  theory  as  to  the  secret  designs  which  God 
may  have  had  when  he  invented  love,  is  weak  at 
the  very  foundation. 

There  is  also,  perhaps,  something  defective 
through  irony,  in  the  manner  in  which  Francois  de 
Sales,  in  this  same  chapter,  desires  that  one  should 
treat  old  married  people.  According  to  him  they 
must  be  regarded  as  ripe  fruits.  If  they  possess 
no  defect,  no  spot  which  arouses  a  fear  lest  they 
may  spoil,  one  may  preserve  them  all  winter  ;  and 
to  that  end,  the  best  means  is  to  bind  them  up  in 
the  very  leaves  which  clustered  about  them  in  their 
freshness.  These  leaves  constitute  a  little  environ- 
ment for  them  ;  a  society,  habits,  wherein  they 
believe  that  they  still  live.  But  if  they  have  some 
blemish,  some  principle  of  corruption,  they  are  fit 
only  to  be  made  into  preserve.  The  preserve, 
naturally,  is  devotion,  which  preserves  them  and 
furnishes  them  with  sugar  which  they  would  not, 
perhaps,  any  longer  retain  otherwise. 

I  give  this  recipe  of  the  good  Bishop  of  Annecy 
for  what  it  is  worth.  It  is  not  for  the  sake  of  that 
page  that  I  would  have  presented  it  to  the  com- 
petition. But  it  is  certain,  that  the  tone  which  he 
maintains  with  his  Philothea  is  that  of  an  exquisite 
man.  He  was  very  fond  of  women,  and  put  them 
to  marvelous  profit,  because  he  always  imposed 
upon  himself  the  absolute  rule  of  his  profession. 


54          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

He  admits  the  possibility  of  tender  collaboration 
and  of  very  intimate  relations  between  man  and 
woman,  to  the  advantage  of  a  work  beloved  in 
common.  This  is  one  of  the  secrets  of  the  Church 
of  Jesus,  and  therein  lies  the  explanation  of  the 
sentiment  which  women,  in  certain  countries,  often 
cherish  for  priests.  They  find  them  superior  to 
their  husbands,  and,  as  the  sarcedotal  vow  in- 
spires them  with  a  sort  of  security,  they  give  them- 
selves up,  without  qualms,  to  a  sentiment  \\hich 
they  would  combat  under  any  other  circumstances. 

Award  then,  without  hesitation,  the  prize  to  those 
of  your  competitors  who  have  voted  for  the  sacred 
boofc»r  They  have  perfectly  understood,  in  the 
first  place,  that  the  good  manner  of  speaking  of 
love  is  to  place  the  essence  and  perfume  of  it 
everywhere,  not  to  talk  of  it  directly  and  in  a 
doctrinal  tone  ;  next,  that  the  mystics,  or,  in  other 
words,  those  who  have  made  the  least  misuse  of 
love  are  those  who  can  speak  of  it  the  best. 

Give  as  prize  to  these  grave  readers  a  copy  of 
the  "  Introduction  to  the  Life  of  Devotion,"  in  the 
edition  of  M.  de  Sacy,  published  by  Techener,  with 
Jansenist  binding.  What  an  enviable  privilege  is 
that  of  these  ancient  books,  which  have  the  right 
to  be  read  in  church  by  pious  women,  at  the 
moment  when,  with  eyes  down-dropped,  without 
distractions,  they  hold  all  their  thoughts  concen- 
trated before  God,  having  nothing  in  their  hearts 
save  what  is  tender,  amiable,  and  good  !  I  often 


ERNEST  KENAN.  55 

wish  to  live  in  the  few  phrases  over  which  those 
for  whom  the  ancient  missal  does  not  suffice  run 
their  eyes.  Alas  !  I  know  not  whether  that  will  be 
granted  me  ! 

Now  it  is  understood,  that  if  you  have  received 
more  worldly,  more  gay,  more  truthful  solutions 
perhaps,  you  must  not  deprive  them  of  their 
recompense  either.  In  this  case,  give  prizes  cor- 
responding to  the  eternal  duplicity  which  forms 
the  bottom  of  human  nature,  and  everyone  will  be 
satisfied  ;  which  is  the  essential  point. 

Believe  in  my  sentiments  of  the  most  affectionate 
devotion. 


THE    CELTIC    DINNER. 

THE  Celtic  dinner  was,  at  first,  a  reunion  of  poor 
Bretons,  nearly  all  of  whom  made  verses,  and  as- 
sembled to  read  them  to  each  other  once  a  month, 
at  the  nearest  possible  spot  to  the  railway  station 
where  one  alights  on  arriving  in  Brittany.  Its 
founder  is  M.  Quellien,  a  poet  himself  and  the  au- 
thor of  Breton  novels,  full  of  charm.  The  price  of 
the  dinner  was  fixed  in  the  beginning,  and  still  re- 
mains, at  five  francs.  Its  sobriety  has  remained 
the  same  ;  but,  thanks  to  an  obliging  ethnography, 
the  limits  of  the  Celtic  race  are  the  limits  of  the 
world  itself  ;  all  races  receive  hearty  welcome 
at  our  little  circle.  I  have  seen  there  Hindoos, 


56          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

Lithuanians,  Hungarians,  and  even  negroes.  At 
desert,  cider  takes  the  place  of  champagne  ;  poe- 
try overflows  in  the  most  widely  differing  languages; 
the  low  Breton  sung  by  Quellien  forces  applause 
from  even  those  who  do  not  understand  the  first 
word  of  it. 

Quellien  prolonged  my  life  by  ten  years  when, 
about  1880,  he  invited  me  to  these  reunions  full  of 
gayety  and  cordiality.  There  I  find  again  all  my 
old  memories  ;  I  feel  rejuvenated  by  fifty  years. 

I  talk  a  great  deal  there,  and,  as  I  like  to  talk 
at  dinners  without  counting  or  preparing  my 
words,  I  emerge  from  them  as  from  a  trip  to 
Brittany,  gay — relatively  speaking — ardent  for  my 
work,  attached  once  more  to  life. 

Although  the  most  absolute  discretion  is  the  rule 
of  the  Celtic  dinner,  Quellien  knows  some  journals. 
He  knows  that  the  public  are  amused  with  very 
small  matters,  provided  that  they  concern  persons 
whose  names  are  familiar,  and  that  what  is  said  of 
them  is  not  very  serious. 

The  friendship  of  those  who  listen  to  me  causes 
them,  moreover,  to  find  pleasure  in  recalling  dis- 
connected remarks,  which  possessed  no  other  in- 
terest than  the  freedom  with  which  they  were 
uttered.  Sometimes  the  newspapers  have  con- 
tained extracts  of  them  on  the  following  morning. 

Twice  or  thrice  it  has  happened  to  me,  while 
perusing  these  good-natured  accounts,  to  find  that, 
thanks  to  the  -editors,  who  put  a  little  coherence 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  57 

into  them,  some  of  my  remarks  contained  a  toler- 
ably pronounced  Breton  flavor.  My  dear  Calmann 
having  recommended  me  to  compose  this  volume 
of  nothing  which  was  not  Breton,  I  give  here  two 
or  three  scraps  of  this  nature.  They  refer  to  the 
two  or  three  solemn  occasions  of  the  Celtic  dinner, 
which  are  the  first  meeting  in  November,  the 
King's  (the  Epiphany)  dinner  in  January,  and  that 
which  Quellien  calls  the  "  Pardon  of  the  Bretons," 
at  the  April  reunion. 

On  the  feast  of  the  Epiphany  of  1889,  the  fol- 
lowing is  attributed  to  me  : 

"  You  know  what  a  horror  I  have  of  speeches, 
especially  of  speeches  at  table — and  yet,  1 
cannot  help  saying  something  in  honor  of  the 
Three  Kings.  Yes,  I  cherish  a  particular 
devotion  for  them.  In  those  days — they  were 
good  old  days  ! — the  wise  men  were  kings, 
the  kings  were  wise  men  !  And  what  beautiful 
attributes  they  had  !  One  bore  incense,  another 
bore  myrrh.  And  the  third — prompt  me,  Coppee  ! 

"  Ah,  yes  !  the  third  bore  gold.  A  good 
thing  also  !  Ah  !  they  were  very  chimerical 
kings,  and  if  they  were  to  arrive  in  Paris,  and  offer 
themselves  to  universal  suffrage — oh!  certainly,  we 
should  vote  for  them,  eternal  children  that  we  are, 
obstinate  partisans  of  the  chimerical.  Would  we 
not,  Quellien?  But  what  a  fine  fiasco  we  should 
make  too  !  Oh  !  a  complete  fiasco  !  These  poor 
Magi  kings !  how  they  would  be  beaten  !  Evi- 
dently universal  suffrage  is  a  fine  thing.  But  I 
think  that  the  Magi  kings  would  have  done  better 


58          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

to  present  themselves  in  Brittany.  There,  perhaps, 
in  short — for  they  were,  after  all,  real  idealists, 
quitting  their  country  to  follow  a  star  ! — there 
they  would  have  been  received  with  honors  ;  they 
would  have  been  cheered.  I  have  no  doubt  about 
the  matter  ;  they  would  have  been  unanimously 
nominated  sovereigns  of  this  kingdom  of  which  we 
form  a  part,  of  which  we  are  the  faithful  subjects, 
the  kingdom  of  the  eternal  chimera !  Therefore 
I  wish  to  propose  a  toast,  in  this  excellent  cider,  to 
the  health  of  the  Magi  kings — to  the  health  of 
Melchior,  Balthazar,  and  Caspar." 

At  the  moment  when  M.  Renan  raises  his  glass, 
cries  are  heard  from  all  quarters  : 

"Who  is  the  king?" 

M.  Renan  cutting  the  cake  which  stands  before 
him  : 

"  Can  it  be  I,  by  any  chance  ?  Oh,  good  Heav- 
ens !  I  perceive,  a  trifle  too  late,  that,  in  drinking 
the  health  of  Balthazar,  I  have  drunk  my  own 
health.  Gentlemen,  I  am  really  touched.  Here  I 
am  king !  I  have  for  insignia  a  bean.  What 
a  delicious  kingdom  is  that  of  the  bean  !  Perhaps 
it  is  chance  which  has  favored  me.  But  I  prefer 
to  be  king  under  the  sign  of  the  bean,  rather  than 
to  be  chosen  by  universal  suffrage.  Let  us  drink 
then  to  the  bean,  to  the  Magi  kings,  to  the  realm 
of  faerie,  to  the  forest  of  Broceliande  !  " 

In  1891  I  repeated  myself  somewhat  ;  for  it 
would  appear  that  this  is  what  I  said  : 

"  How  shall  one  contrive  to  speak  of  the  Magi 
after  our  friend  Bocuhor,  in  his  enchanting  '  Noel,' 


ERNEST  RENAN.  59 

of  the  other  day  ?  What  an  exquisite  little  work, 
what  a  charming  evening  he  has  given  me  ! 
What  good  sentiments  he  attributed  to  his  royal 
personages  !  I  know  not  whether  those  worthy 
sovereigns  possessed  so  advanced  a  theology. 
But  what  does  it  matter?  They  were  certainly 
persons  of  spirit. 

The  legend  does  not  state  that  they  came  to 
Brittany.  It  is  a  pity  they  came  to  Treves  ;  the 
fact  is  certain,  since  their  inn  is  still  to  be  seen 
there — the  inn  in  which  they  stayed — evidently, 
it  was  the  best  in  town.  Travelers  of  such 
importance  ! 

But,  if  we  are  not  certain  that  they  came  to  Brit- 
tany, it  is,  at  least,  excessively  probable,  is  it 
not,  my  dear  Quellien  ?  Make  some  researches 
on  this  point ;  you  will  discover  something.  And 
if  they  did  go  thither,  they  must  have  been  ex- 
tremely pleased.  They  found  there  so  many  good 
things,  a  sweet  country,  good  people — and  good 
cider. 

They  are  certainly  our  patrons.  We  idealists, 
detached  from  the  things  of  earth,  follow  a  star, 
like  the  Magi,  without  knowing  in  the  least 
whither  it  will  conduct  us  ! 

How  good  was  that  which  they  did — they 
abandoned  their  subjects,  and,  after  all,  we  do 
not  see  that  the  subjects  grumbled  over  it. 
Constitutional  rule  sometimes  makes  progress 
through  the  absence,  the  madness,  or  the  minority 
of  sovereigns. 

Yes,  we  are  a  little  like  those  Magi  of  the  Orient. 
We  are  the  traveling  companions  of  the  stars  ! 
That  which  they  followed,  not  knowing  whither  it 
would  conduct  them,  led  them  to  a  manger,  where, 
upon  the  straw,  they  found  that  which  they  sought. 


60          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

The  stars  which  we  follow  resemble  the  star  of 
the  Magi  ;  they  lead  us — upon  the  straw.  We 
succeed  in  everything,  gentlemen,  but  I  believe 
that  we  shall  never  succeed  in  becoming  rich. 
That  is  not  our  profession.  We  shall  always  leave 
to  others  the  burdensome  care  of  being  wealthy. 
That  does  not  concern  us.  Vidimus  stdlam  ejus  j 
venimus  adorare  cum — We  have  seen  his  star  ;  we 
come  to  adore  him.  I  sometimes  feel  a  great 
curiosity  to  know  what  took  place  in  the  kingdoms 
of  these  good  monarchs,  during  their  journey 
in  quest  of  the  true  God.  I  ought  to  have  asked 
my  colleague  M.  de  Vogue.  You  know  that  the 
Vogues  descend  from  the  Magi  kings, — or,  at  least 
from  the  one  named  Melchior, — and  that  is  why 
the  eldest  of  the  family  bears  the  baptismal  name 
of  Melchior,  in  memory  of  their  glorious  ancestor. 
My  colleague  de  Vogue  must  have  among  his 
family  documents  some  very  interesting  informa- 
tion concerning  him.  It  is  the  same  in  Savoy, 
where  the  Costa  de  Beauregard,  if  I  am  not  mis- 
taken, believe  that  they  descend  from  the  good 
thief,  and  hence  the  eldest  of  the  family  is  always 
named  Bonlarron — good  thief  !  Ah  !  that  is  a 

saint  of  fine  authenticity Jesus  said  to  him 

on  the  cross  :  '  To-day  thou  shall  be  with  me  in 
paradise  ! '  There  are  few  canonizations  so  regu- 
lar as  that. 

It  is  always  Latin  and  history  that  the  cures 
know.  If  I  had  been  a  country  priest,  as  it  was, 
evidently,  my  vocation  to  be — what  a  charming 
profession  !  How  much  good  one  can  do,  and 
how  happy  one  can  be  ! — I  would  have  pronounced 
a  panegyric  every  year  on  the  Magi  kings.  Not 
being  a  country  priest,  finding  myself  called  to 


ERNEST  RE  NAN.  6 1 

other  exercises,  I   return  to  my  beaten  path  with 
you  ;  I  become  parish  priest  once  more." 

The  Pardon  of  1889  was  particularly  brilliant 
and  animated.  Quellien  sparkled. 

"  You  have  spoken  like  an  oracle,  my  dear  Quel- 
lien, and  you  must  be  very  greatly  satisfied  and 
proud  to  have  such  a  fine  Celtic  dinner  this  even- 
ing;  a  dinner  such  as  you  have  never  seen  before. 

M.  Quellien.— Oh  !  Yes,  I  have !  At  Tre- 
guier  ! 

M.  Renan. — Yes,  at  Treguier  only,  if  you  please. 
Well  !  I  assure  you,  gentlemen,  that  this  festival 
fills  me  with  joy.  My  friend  Quellien  has  just 
reminded  you,  in  the  most  perfect  way,  of  what  a 
Pardon  is.  One  could  find  a  great  deal  of  pleas- 
ure in  it,  even  if  one  did  not  belong  to  the  parish. 
There  were  dances,  drinking  ;  one  heard  sermons  ; 
one  gained  indulgences.  Indulgences  !  .  .  .  . 
Oh,  what  a  good  thing  !  Who  among  us  does 
not  need  them  ?  It  was  a  very  good  thing  ;  forty 
days,  a  hundred  days  of  indulgence,  to  be  won  ! 
It  is  true  that  forty  days  of  indulgence,  when  one 
has  thousands  of  days  of  purgatory  in  perspective, 
are  very  little.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  I  always 
figure  this  purgatory  to  myself  as  something 
charming.  It  must  be  an  excessively  agreeable 
sojourn  ;  one  always  finds  excellent  company 
there  ;  for,  is  it  not  true,  that  it  is  not  the  people 
who  are  the  most  agreeable  to  know,  who  go 
straight  to  paradise  ?  I  imagine  that  we  shall  find 
there  discreet,  little,  somber  alleys,  where  charming 
interviews  will  be  unfolded,  perhaps  the  continua- 
tions of  delicious  romances  begun  on  earth. 


62          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

This  Quellien  is,  really,  an  organizer  of  the  first 
rank.  [Addressing  Prince  Roland  Bonaparte:] 
Permit  me,  Prince,  to  tell  you  a  little  of  his  eth- 
nography ;  it  is  truly  marvelous.  He  is  convinced 
that  the  Celtic  race  is  the  center,  the  pivot  of  the 
entire  world;  but  the  question  is  as  to  how  he 
understands  the  matter.  According  to  his  manner 
of  looking  at  it,  the  limits  of  the  Celtic  country 
are  the  limits  of  the  world.  All  the  world  is  Celt, 
and  thus  it  is  that  we  meet  at  this  dinner  a  com- 
pany that  is  excellent  and  varied  in  the  most 
delightful  manner. 

But  to  return  to  the  Pardons,  I  often  picture  to 
myself  those  of  Brittany  in  the  olden  time.  At 
Saint  Yves,  for  example,  near  Treguier,  I  remem- 
ber that  pulpit  backed  up  against  the  wall  of  the 
church — in  the  Middle  Ages,  you  know,  they 
preached  in  the  open  air.  The  pulpit  was  reached 
by  a  ladder  :  no  other  communication  existed, 
either  on  the  interior  or  exterior — no  staircase. 
The  preacher  climbed  over  the  balustrade  and 
spoke.  On  the  whole,  that  which  was  preached 
was  tolerably  within  my  own  sympathies ;  they 
preached  the  pardon  of  injuries,  reconciliation — 
this,  by  the  way,  was  a  very  good  thing,  and  I  feel 
grateful  to  my  dear  Saint  Yves  for  having  inspired 
from  his  tomb  so  good  a  doctrine.  I  have  related 
elsewhere  how  he  was  my  guardian.  At  the  death 
of  my  father,  my  mother,  perceiving  the  desperate 
state  of  my  affairs,  took  me  by  the  hand,  led  me  to 
his  chapel,  and  confided  me  to  the  care  of  this 
excellent  man  of  the  law.  I  cannot  say  that  the 
holy  man  proved  himself  a  great  man  of  business, 
so  far  as  I  am  concerned  ;  I  am  none  the  less 
grateful  to  him.  A  few  days  ago  I  read  the  docu- 
ments which  M.  de  La  Borderie  has  published  on 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  63 

his  biography.  Some  of  them  made  an  impression 
on  me.  There  we  behold  the  man  as  though  he 
had- lived  only  twenty  years  ago  ;  his  costume,  his 
ways,  his  habits  of  action  ;  in  everything  he  was 
one  of  the  men  who  has  done  the  most  honor  to 
Brittany.  His  reputation  was  spread  over  the 
whole  world.  A  low-Breton  who  makes  the  vast 
world  speak  of  him  certainly  deserves  some  credit 
for  that.  In  order  to  find  a  holy  lawyer,  people 
have  been  forced  to  come  in  search  of  him  even  to 
Lower  Brittany  ;  it  is  because  there  were  not  many 
elsewhere. 

Heavens  !  How  I  should  like  to  preach  a  lay 
sermon  from  the  summit  of  that  pulpit  of  Saint 
Yves,  or  from  any  other.  I  should  have  liked  to 
preach  !  However,  1  am  a  priest  miscarried  !  am 
I  not,  and  the  civil  dress  does  not  suit  me  at  all. 
[Laughter.]  I  should  have  liked  to  preach  at  a 
Pardon  in  Brittany,  and  what  I  should  have  liked 
to  preach  is  a  little  pacification.  Men  are  too 
much  divided  ;  that  saddens  me.  In  my  child- 
hood I  did  not  see  that ;  there  were  great  differ- 
ences of  opinion,  there  was  no  division  to  the 
death,  as  there  is  to-day.  My  father  and  my 
grandfather  were  great  patriots  ;  they  took  part  in 
the  revolution.  In  1815  the  situation  became  very 
difficult  for  my  father.  The  counter-signature  of 
a  Chevalier  of  Saint  Louis  was  necessary  on  every 
occasion.  The  principal  Legitimist  of  the  locality 
came  and  said  to  him  :  '  M.  Renan,  when  you 
require  a  signature,  I  do  not  wish  you  to  ask  for 
it  from  anyone  but  me.'  Not  a  shadow  of  hatred 
between  the  men  who  had  almost  discharged  shots 
at  each  other  the  day  before. 

This  began  to  undergo  a  change  in  1830.  Thus 
it  was  that  the  mass  which  was  said  for  the  festi- 


64          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

val  day  of  the  King,  Louis  Philippe — Philippe's 
mass  as  it  was  called — became  a  great  cause  of 
divisions.  My  mother  related  to  me  how,  one  day, 
she  went  to  this  mass — it  was  on  a  Sunday.  On 

her  way  thither,  she  encountered  Madame  D ,  a 

very  respectable  person,  who  lived  along  side  of 
us — an  old  Legitimist,  of  course — who  said  to  her  : 
'  What,  Madame  Renan,  are  you  going  to  Phi- 
lippe's mass  !  '  And  my  mother  answered  her  : 

'Good  Heavens!  Madame  D ,  I  am  going  to 

mass,  but  if  it  causes  you  pain,  I  will  not  go.' 

It  is  not  like  that  now  ;  people  are  at  swords' 
points.  We  who  dwell  in  Paris  do  not  see  it. 
Everything  with  us  is  confined  to  very  petty 
schisms,  to  schismatic  dinners,  which  signify 
nothing  ;  is  not  one  free  to  dine  in  one's  own 
fashion  ?  But,  in  the  country,  it  is  much  more 
serious.  People  scrutinize  each  other  and  press 
each  other  very  close.  I  repeat,  let  us  endeavor 
to  understand  each  other;  human  affairs  are  not 
worth  the  trouble,  while  rending  each  other  asunder 
over  them,  of  rendering  existence  disagreeable  on 
account  of  them. 

This  is  the  little  lay  sermon  which  I  should  have 
liked  to  preach  had  it  been  possible  for  me  to 
speak  in  a  pulpit,  which  is  forbidden  to  me. 

Well,  let  us  thank  our  dear  Quellien  for  his 
initiative,  and  let  us  all  drink,  if  you  please,  to  the 
prosperity  of  this  dinner;  not,  as  Quellien  said,  to 
his  Pardon  of  1909,  but,  within  sensible  and  modest 
limits,  to  its  cordiality,  to  its  gayety.  May  Saint  Yves 
guard  us  against  quarrels  and  discords.  Amen." 

At  the  session,  when  we  reassembled  in  Novem- 
ber, the  gentlemen  ask  me  in  general  how  I  have 
spent  my  holiday  at  Perros. 


ERNEST  RENAN.  65 

"  I  have  seen  once  more  my  little  old  friends  : 
flowers  which  I  have  never  seen  except  in  Brittany, 
birds  upon  which  I  founded  a  complete  mythology 
in  my  childhood.  Never  do  I  hear  without  a  shiver 
'the  bird  which  saws  its  heart.'  It  has  a  strong 
hiccough,  which  recalls  the  sound  of  a  saw  drawn 
down  from  above.  It  troubles  me  ;  I  imagined  in- 
side of  him  a  little  diamond  saw,  with  steel  teeth, 
prodigiously  fine,  with  which  he  made  an  incision 
in  his  heart  to  keep  from  suffocating. 

The  young  girls  seem  to  me  as  pretty  and  ingen- 
uous as  ever ;  evidently  our  doctrines  have  not 
reached  them.  They  have  the  same  air  of  gay, 
resigned  credulity.  We  live  all  our  life  on  the 
memory  of  the  heads  of  young  girls  which  we  have 
seen  from  sixteen  to  eighteen  years  of  age.  I  have 
seen  once  more  several  of  the  little  friends  who 
played  with  me  when  I  was  a  child,  and  who  ap- 
peared to  me,  for  the  first  time,  to  personify  duty, 
charm,  virtue.  They  are  no  longer  my  little  friends. 
Poor  Manon,  my  little  nurse,  who  was  five  or  six 
years  older  than  I,  died  last  year.  She  belonged  to 
a  family  of  poor  Legitimists.  We  used  to  have 
grand  political  discussions  ;  she  maintained  that 
Louis  Philippe  was  not  really  king.  She  died  happy 
in  the  hospital,  where  I  went  to  see  her,  for  I  gave 
the  wherewithal  to  make  for  her,  after  her  death, 
what  is  called  a  chapel  ;  that  is  to  say,  a  funeral  ex- 
hibition at  the  gate  of  the  hospital,  where  relatives 
and  friends  come  to  bid  you  farewell.  A  more  ser- 
ious nurse  was  Marie  L ,  whom  I  found  again 

this  year.  She  is  a  hospital  nurse,  under  the  name 
of  Sister  Marie-Agathe.  She  must  be  more  than 
eighty  years  of  age.  I  was  six  years  old  ;  I 
thought  her  very  pretty. 

I  conferred  this  distinction  upon  her  at  a  very 


66         RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

early  age.  The  day  after  our  instalment  at  Lan- 
nion — I  was  seven  years  old — I  was  dispatched  on 
an  errand  to  an  aunt,  who  was  very  kind  to  us, 
where  we  had  two  cousins,  who  soon  became  great 
friends  with  my  sister  Henriette.  I  did  my  errand 
all  wrong  ;  I  had  forgotten  everything.  '  Come, 
whom  did  you  see?  Adele?  Alexandrine?'  I 
did  not  yet  know  how  to  distinguish  my  cousins 
by  name.  I  replied  :  '  The  pretty  one.'  That 

evening  my  aunt  told  the  tale  to  my  Aunt  T ; 

they  laughed  a  great  deal ;  the  one  who  was  not 
pretty,  but  who  was  the  best  girl  in  the  world, 
*  made  war  '  on  me  during  the  whole  evening. 

In  this  connection  let  me  tell  you  that,  a  few 
months  ago,  I  had  a  lively  impression  of  the  pleasure 
which  I  used  to  feel  with  my  young  girl  companions 
sixty  years  ago.  It  was  in  my  quarters  at  the  Col- 
lege de  France.  One  day  Yves,  my  servant-man, 
came  and  announced  that  an  old  lady  and  a  young 
girl  requested  to  speak  with  me.  I  gave  orders 
that  they  should  be  shown  in.  The  young  one 
entered  alone,  and  seated  herself  with  charming 
grace  and  ease.  She  was  a  child  of  twelve  or 
thirteen,  her  face  fresh  and  rosy,  Surrounded  by  an 
aureole  of  white  curls,  with  an  expression  of  ex- 
treme candor.  I  thought  I  beheld  an  apparition, 
as  though  one  of  the  little  Bretons  of  my  sixteenth 
year  had  been  resuscitated  before  me  ;  I  thought 
of  the  one  whom  I  had  loved  the  most :  Sic  oculos, 
sic  ilia  tnanus,  sic  ora  ferebat — These  were  her 
eyes,  this  was  her  hand,  thus  spoke  her  mouth. 

My  little  visitor  opened  the  conversation  at 
once.  'Sir,'  she  said  to  me,  'will  you  accept 
something  from  me  ? '  '  Yes,  certainly,  mademoi- 
selle.' She  opened  a  very  tiny  card-case,  and  took 
from  it  a  small  medal,  which  she  handed  to  me. 


ERNEST  RENAN.  67 

As  I  thanked  her.  she  said,  without  literary  affecta- 
tion, that  I  had  written  a  great  many  beautiful 
things,  that  people  had  quoted  to  her  some  of  my 
thoughts  which  had  given  her  pleasure.  Not  a 
word  about  religion.  Oh,  profound  cleverness  of 
the  dove  !  She  knew  that  the  first  word  of  propa- 
ganda would  have  awakened  in  me  the  hardened 
protester,  and  that  once  entangled  in  those  arid 
wastes,  one  can  no  longer  escape  from  them.  She 
remained  on  the  ground  of  which  she  was  the  mis- 
tress, and  allowed  me  to  parade  before  her  1  know 
not  what  incoherent  phrase  about  the  distinction 
between  the  gift  in  itself  and  the  sentiment  which 
had  prompted  the  offering  of  it.  On  leaving,  she 
offered  me  her  little  hand,  and  permitted  me  to 
press  it.  I  conducted  her  to  the  anteroom,  where 
I  found  seated  a  sort  of  elderly  nun,  who  had  ac- 
companied her.  From  the  contented  smile  of  the 
young  girl,  the  duenna  understood  that  I  had 
accepted.  I  overheard  the  two  women  conversing 
very  affectionately  about  me  as  they  descended  the 
staircase. 

I  ask  your  pardon  for  thus  diving  with  you  into 
my  memories,  but  life,  at  my  age,  is  made  up  of 
souvenirs  ;  it  is  also  made  of  good  moments  like 
this.  You  really  rejuvenate  me  when  you  appear 
so  glad  to  have  me  at  your  table  that  it  would  be 
very  ungracious  of  me,  next  year,  not  to  be  in  this 
world,  in  order  to  be  present  at  such  a  gathering." 

Quellien  has  many  other  notes  ;  I  leave  them  to 
him  ;  he  will  narrate  all  when  I  am  dead.  He  will 
do  well,  nevertheless,  to  limit  himself,  and  not  to 
fall  into  the  provincial  error  of  assuming  that  every- 
one must  take  pleasure  in  that  which  the  memories 


68          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

of  our  childhood  tinge  for  us  with  deceptive  hues. 
A  certain  history  of  a  parish  priest  in  Brittany 
strikes  me  as  full  of  philosophy.  One  day,  during 
the  sermon,  everyone  burst  into  tears.  A  stout 
fellow,  who  was  leaning  against  the  base  of  a  pillar, 
remained  utterly  indifferent.  "  And  you,  why  do 
you  not  weep?"  he  was  asked.  "  I  ?"  he  replied, 
"  I  am  not  of  this  parish." 


THE  GAULS  IN  BRITTANY. 

DURING  the  last  days  of  August,  1889,  the  Ar- 
chaeological Society  of  Wales,  while  visiting  Brit- 
tany, made  a  brief  halt  at  my  solitude  of  Ros- 
mapamon.  In  introducing  them  to  me,  my  friend, 
Mr.  John  Rhys,  professor  of  Celtic  at  Oxford  Uni- 
versity, was  so  good  as  to  utter  a  few  words  which 
touched  me  to  the  heart.  J  replied  as  follows  : 

"  I  ought  to  thank  you  in  Breton,  gentlemen  and 
ladies.  But  it  is  now  fourteen  hundred  years  since 
we  separated  ;  our  dialects  have  had  time  to 
diverge  widely  ;  we  might  find  some  difficulty  in 

understanding  each  other.  And  in  English 

That  is  one  of  my  disgraces.  In  my  day,  we  were 
taught  only  Latin.  I  read  English,  but  I  under- 
stand it  ill  when  I  hear  it,  and  I  do  not  speak  it. 
It  is  a  little  the  fault  of  my  wife,  who  has  acted  as 
my  interpreter  on  the  numerous  occasions  when  I 
have  had  need  of  your  beautiful  language. 

You  come  from  Lannion,  the  natal  town  of  my 


ERNEST  RENAN.  69 

mother.  I  will  relate  to  you  a  memory  about  that 
little  city,  which  was  told  me  by  your  great  poet 
Tennyson.  During  an  excursion  to  Brittany,  he 
passed  a  night  at  Lannion.  On  preparing  to  de- 
part, he  asked  his  landlady  for  his  bill,  and  she 
replied:  'Oh,  nothing,  sir.  You  have  sung  our 
King  Arthur  !  '  Our  community  of  race  is  one  of 
the  historical  facts  upon  which  I  am  fondest  of 
meditating.  I  have  often  said  to  myself,  that  if 
the  storms  which  traverse  our  poor  land  of  France 
in  this  century  should  force  me  to  seek  an  asylum  in 
England — it  is  not  probable  ;  I  am  old,  and  then, 
this  dear  country  is  tenacious  of  life  ;  one  must 
not  get  excited  over  every  crisis  which  it  tra- 
verses— I  should  appeal,  if  only  for  the  sake 
of  amusing  the  public  a  little,  to  the  old  law  of 
Edward  the  Confessor  :  Britones,  Armorici,  quum 
venerint  in  regno  isto  suscipi  debent  et  in  regno 
protegi  sicut  probi  cives  de  corpore  regni  hujus  ; 
exierunt  quondam  de  sanguine  Britonum  regni 
hujus.  [Britons  and  Armoricans,  when  they  come 
to  this  kingdom,  must  be  received  and  protected 
like  honorable  citizens  of  the  body  of  this  king- 
dom ;  for  they  spring  from  the  blood  of  the 
Britons  of  this  kingdom.]  People  remembered 
the  history  of  the  olden  days  then.  Moreover,  we 
have  not  changed  much.  We  belong  to  an  obsti- 
nate race  which  is  always  behind  the  times. 
Even  when,  in  appearance,  we  pass  from  black  to 
white,  we  remain  the  same  at  bottom.  Our  old 
saints  were  very  headstrong.  Those  good  old 
saints  of  Brittany,  all  of  Gaelic  or  Irish  origin,  are 
my  great  devotion.  I  do  not  care  much  for  the 
modern  saints,  I  confess  ;  they  are  too  intolerant. 
Alas,  veritable  saints  are  becoming  scarcer  every 
clay  !  The  modern  clergy  does  not  love  them  ; 


?o          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

they  say  mass  once  a  year  in  their  chapel,  but  they 
are  not  sorry  when  the  chapel  and  the  legend  dis- 
appear. The  clergy  has  an  instinctive  feeling 
that  these  saints  of  another  day  were  a  bit  hereti- 
cal and  schismatic  ;  in  any  case,  they  have  never 
been  canonized  by  the  Pope.  This  is  what  oc- 
curred, not  very  far  from  this  spot,  a  few  years 
ago,  I  am  told.  There  was  a  little  chapel  dedi- 
cated to  Saint  Betizec.  I  think  that  is  the  ancient 
name  Budoc.  His  stone  statue  had  become  nearly 
shapeless  ;  the  parish  priest  took  up  a  collection  to 
restore  it.  This  produced  about  forty  francs,  with 
which  the  cure  purchased  from  the  image-dealers 
of  the  Rue  Saint-Sulpice,  a  Virgin  of  Lourdes, 
which,  he  cleverly  substituted  for  the  decrepit 
statue.  This  is  the  manner  in  which  a  saint  is 
suppressed  and  replaced  by  the  effigy  of  a  melan- 
choly modern  miracle.  In  heaven  we  know  Saint 
Beuzec  is  safe  from  attack.  But  on  earth,  what 
dangers  are  incurred  by  these  old  patriarchs  of  our 
race.  A  few  good  women  still  know  their  legends, 
which  the  parish  priest  feigns  to  be  ignorant  of ; 
they  must  be  collected  as  speedily  as  possible. 

The  resemblances  are  great  between  us.  The 
differences,  on  the  contrary,  seem  to  me  very 
small.  You  are  Protestants ;  we  are  Catholics. 
Oh,  that  is  a  difference  of  merely  secondary 
rank  !  Are  not  Protestants  and  Catholics  the  same 
before  God,  if  they  practice  their  religion  from  the 
heart  ?  I  am  in  the  habit  of  saying  that,  in  virtue 
of  many  analogies,  the  Breton  populations  of 
France  should  have  become  Protestants  like  those 
of  England.  The  religious  sentiment  in  these 
peoples  is  very  profound,  very  individual,  very 
much  detached  from  forms  and  books.  Renee  of 
France,  the  daughter  of  Anne  of  Brittany,  was 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  71 

Calvin's  firmest  supporter.  The  power  of  Rome  in 
these  localities  has  been  created  by  the  French 
concordats,  the  result  of  which  has  been  that,  for 
centuries,  there  has  hardly  been  a  single  Bishop  in 
Breton  territory  who  could  speak  Breton. 

You  are  good  English  subjects,  we  are  good 
French  subjects  :  two  fine  traditions  of  civilization. 
....  A  lofty  duty  is  incumbent  upon  both  of  us. 
It  is  to  maintain  friendly  relations  between  the 
great  nations  who  share  us  between  them,  and 
whose  common  action,  whose  rivalry,  if  you  like,  is 
so  necessary  to  the  good  of  civilization.  It  is  so 
stupid  to  hate  each  other.  By  working  for  peace, 
we  shall,  in  reality,  be  working  at  a  Celtic  labor. 

Did  time  permit,  I  would  tell  you  my  ideas  as  to 
the  ethnography  of  France  and  the  United  King- 
dom. My  opinion  is  that  the  proportion  of  Celtic 
and  Germanic  elements  is  very  nearly  the  same  in 
both.  The  Anglo-Saxons  did  not  carry  their 
women  with  them  any  more  than  the  Franks  did. 
The  triumph  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  tongue  arises 
from  the  fact  that,  with  you,  Latin  did  not  kill  out 
the  Celtic  dialects  as  it  did  on  this  side  of  the 
Strait.  Anglo-Saxon  was  extinguished  by  Anglo- 
Roman,  as  the  Frank  language  died  out  before  the 

Gallo-Roman But  I  have  already  detained 

you  too  long  with  my  loquacity.  You  are  in  haste 
to  go  and  pay  your  devotion  to  Notre-Dame  de  la 
Clatre,  and  to  Saint  Guirec.  I  will  go  with  you." 


72          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

CAN  ONE  WORK  IN  THE  COUNTRY  ?  A 
SPEECH  DELIVERED  AT  THE  SORBONNE 
AT  A  GENERAL  SESSION  OF  THE  CON- 
GRESS OF  THE  LEARNED  SOCIETIES, 
JUNE  15,  1889. 

MONSIEUR  LE  MINISTRE. 

Gentlemen :  When  an  amiable  message  from 
Monsieur  the  Minister  of  Public  Instruction  pro- 
posed to  me,  a  month  ago,  the  honor  of  taking  part 
in  this  solemn  assembly,  I  was  so  much  touched 
by  the  pleasure  that  I  should  have  in  conversing 
with  you  for  a  few  moments,  that  I  forgot  the  wise 
resolution  which  I  adopted  several  years  ago,  never 
to  speak  again  in  this  vast  amphitheater  made  for 
voices  younger  and  more  sure  of  themselves  than 
mine.  Nevertheless,  the  temptation  was  very  great. 
An  audience  like  yours,  the  result  of  an  enlightened 
selection,  seems  to  me  a  piece  of  rare  good  fortune  ; 
your  reunion  appears  to  me  the  living  proof  of  a 
thought  which  is  Jiabitual  with  me,  or,  to  express  it 
more  exactly,  like  a  decisive  argument  in  favor  of 
a  protest  which  always  escapes  from  my  lips  when 
I  hear  the  deplorably  erroneous  opinion  announced 
that  one  can  work  only  in  Paris.  On  a  day  like 
this  such  an  assertion  is,  assuredly,  nonsense.  In 
the  presence  of  such  lofty  recompenses  and  of  this 
mass  of  works  to  which  the  most  competent  judges 


ERNEST  REXAN-.  73 

render  homage  ;  after  listening  to  your  infinitely 
learned  discourses  on  the  infinitely  varied  objects 
which  occupy  the  human  mind,  the  learned  fe- 
cundity of  the  country  requires  no  demonstration. 
It  is  none  the  less  true  that  the  contrary  opinion 
leads  many  minds  astray,  thwarts  many  careers.  I 
should  like,  in  your  company,  to  seek  the  origin, 
the  causes  of  this,  and,  if  possible,  to  point  out 
some  remedies  by  means  of  which  certain  real 
inconveniences  may  be  lessened. 

The  idea  that  one  cannot  work  in  the  country  is 
less  than  one  hundred  years  old.  A  hundred 
years  ago  Buffon  had  just  died  ;  the  great  out- 
lines of  "  Natural  History  "  had  been  discovered  at 
Montbard.  A  little  earlier,  Montesquieu  had  dis- 
covered the  most  profound  laws  of  political  history 
at  Bordeaux.  Not  only  did  men  work  in  the  prov- 
inces in  those  days,  but  they  produced  masterpieces 
there.  The  concentration  of  intellectual  matters 
in  Paris  begins  during  the  first  years  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  Around  this  marvelous  center  of 
light  and  intellect,  a  zone  of  shadow  could  not  fail 
to  form,  by  the  law  of  contrasts.  A  powerful  drain- 
age of  the  intellectual  forces  of  France  was  in 
operation.  The  Constitution  of  the  year  III  had 
settled  that  there  was  to  be  a  National  Institute 
for  the  whole  of  the  Republic— a  national  institute 
charged  with  collecting  discoveries,  and  perfecting 
arts  and  sciences.  A  few  weeks  later,  the  Conven- 
tion decreed  :  "  The  National  Institute  of  Arts 


74          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

and  Sciences  belongs  to  the  whole  Republic :  it 
is  fixed  at  Paris." 

It  is  clear  that  this  decision  did  not  arouse  a 
single  objection  when  it  was  passed.  In  its  first 
organization,  the  Institute  was  composed  of  a  cer- 
tain number  of  members  residing  in  Paris  and  a 
like  number  of  associate  members  residing  in  the 
different  parts  of  the  Republic.  At  the  end  of  a 
few  years,  the  impossibility  of  recruiting  the  pro- 
vincial contingent  in  a  suitable  manner  was  recog- 
nized ;  residence  in  Paris  was  indispensable.  The 
irresistible  law  was  fulfilled.  A  maxim  which  is 
upheld  in  practice,  even  by  those  who  condemn  it 
in  theory,  could  not  fail  to  have  deep  roots.  The 
exaggerated  tendency  to  Parisian  centralization 
must  have  had  causes,  in  some  direction,  in  its 
day. 

Its  cause,  in  fact,  lay  in  a  very  real  necessity,  in 
a  momentary  state  of  science  which  decreed  that, 
for  a  certain  period,  creative  efforts  should  be 
concentrated  at  a  special  point.  The  budget  of 
science  was  slender  in  those  days  ;  its  implements 
were  restricted  in  number ;  the  means  of  research 
were  singularly  limited,  could  not  be  separated 
into  small  bits  without  damage.  The  masters 
were,  also,  very  few.  When  Laplace  monopolized 
the  problem  of  the  mechanism  of  the  universe  ; 
when  Berthollet  concentrated  in  his  laboratory 
the  efforts  of  a  newly  born  chemistry  ;  when  the 
battle  of  natural  history  was  carried  on 


ERNEST  KENAN.  75 

sively  around  Cuvier  and  his  emulators  ;  when 
Oriental  studies  were  dependent  upon  Silvestre 
de  Sacy,  the  multiplicity  of  schools  was  useless. 
It  might  even  have  proved  fatal.  Creation  in  sci- 
entific, literary,  and  artistic  directions 'generally 
takes  place  at  well-defined  points,  hence  the 
creative  age  necessarily  tends  to  unity.  The  spot 
where  Galileo  worked  monopolized  astronomy, 
as  a  matter  of  course.  When  Descartes  and  New- 
ton held  in  their  brains  the  loftiest  thought  of  their 
time,  they  were  also  terrible  centralizers. 

It  is  not  surprising,  then,  that  the  brilliant  and 
fruitful  period  which  France  has  been  traversing 
for  the  last  sixty  years  should  have  exacted  a 
center  of  blossoming,  a  sort  of  nest,  powerfully 
overheated  and  wisely  arranged  for  the  incubation 
of  the  many  germs  which  have  become,  at  the 
present  moment,  distinct  worlds.  The  origin  of 
each  science  almost  always  carries  us  back  to  a 
very  restricted  school — to  an  egg,  if  I  may  so  ex- 
press myself — containing  the  principle  of  evolution 
and  the  nourishment  of  the  new-born  infant. 

In  order  to  make  the  chart  of  the  heavens,  an 
observatory  was  necessary.  The  work  of  renova- 
ting the  ancient  texts  was  possible  only  in  the 
neighborhood  of  a  vast  library  of  manuscripts. 
Abel  Remusat  could  not  have  created  the  science 
of  Chinese  in  a  city  where  there  was  no  collection 
of  Chinese  books. 

But  the  state  of  affairs  is  now  quite  different. 


76          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

The  maturity  to  which  a  great  many  sciences  have 
attained  permits  of  excellent  work  outside  of  the 
centers  where  the  creation  was  first  made.  Books 
and  scientific  collections  are  now  so  numerous  that 
one  is  allowed  to  arrive,  through  reading,  at  orig- 
inal combinations.  Leaving  out  of  the  question 
local  history,  which  is  so  interesting,  at  least  one 
half  of  scientific  research  can  be  effected  by  work 
in  the  study.  In  many  branches  of  sciences — in  the 
majo'ity  of  Oriental  studies,  for  example — the  con- 
sulta'  ion  of  old  books,  anterior  to  the  introduction 
of  modern  methods,  has  only  a  secondary  impor- 
tance By  means  of  decidedly  limited  sacrifices,  a 
sagacious  investigator  can,  on  a  mass  of  problems 
of  the  first  magnitude,  assemble  about  him  all  the 
elements  for  entirely  new  critical  researches.  It  is 
even  very  remarkable  that  it  is  the  youngest  sci- 
ences which  require  the  least  apparatus,  and  which 
can  best  be  cultivated  in  cities  which  are  not  rich 
in  repositories  of  ancient  books.  Take  compara- 
tive philology,  for  example.  By  an  initial  expen- 
diture of  a  few  thousand  francs,  and  a  subscription 
to  three  or  four  special  publications,  one  may  pos- 
sess the  tools  necessary  for  those  long  and  patient 
comparisons  for  which  the  tranquillity  of  mind  that 
one  enjoys  in  the  country  offers  particularly  favor- 
able conditions. 

A  very  great  number  of  branches  of  study  might 
be  thus  pursued  in  an  entirely  private  manner,  and 
in  the  most  retired  localities.  The  finest  example 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  77 

in  this  line  has  been  furnished  by  the  illustrious 
Borghesi,  who  deliberately  selected  San  Marino, 
and  made  it  the  center  of  his  studies  in  Latin  epig- 
raphy. He  preferred  a  free  village,  where  no 
one  would  concern  themselves  about  him,  further 
than  to  salute  him  respectfully,  to  papal  Rome, 
where  people  would  have  busied  themselves  very 
much  with  him,  but  merely  to  hinder  him. 

I  can  say  as  much  of  general  philosophical 
ideas.  Darwin  never  wished  to  leave  the  village 
where  a  sort  of  chance  had  established  him. 
Leaving  to  Paris  the  great  rarities,  the  limited 
specialties,  the  researches  which  require  powerful 
outfits  of  tools,  the  country  might  also  thus  under- 
take with  profit  a  mass  of  labors  which  have 
hitherto  been  reserved  for  scientific  capitals,  and 
which  are  now  possible  everywhere.  Let  each 
branch  of  science  have  its  reviews — if  I  were 
permitted  to  express  a  wish,  by  the  bye,  I  should 
ask  that  they  be  not  too  greatly  multiplied — its 
periodical  publications,  which  keep  readers  in- 
formed of  what  is  being  done  in  each  workshop  of 
researches  ;  let  the  libraries  of  towns  and  faculties 
contain  collections  which  it  is  difficult  for  private 
persons  to  possess  ;  let  each  individual  take  as 
great  care  of  his  library  as  of  a  part  of  himself, 
and  the  difference  between  Paris  and  the  country, 
so  far  as  work  is  concerned,  will  no  longer  exist, 
and  at  the  next  revision  of  the  regulations  of  the 
Institute  the  article  which  exacts  residence  in 


7 8         RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

Paris   may   be    suppressed    without   the    slightest 
inconvenience. 

Even  in  that  which  touches  work  requiring 
vast  collections  of  ancient  books — work  for  which 
Paris  assuredly  possesses  immense  advantages — the 
country  is  not  always  aware  of  the  resources 
which  it  possesses.  A  few  days  after  I  had  passed 
my  examination  for  a  fellowship  in  philosophy 
in  1848,  I  received  my  appointment  as  professor 
in  the  Lyceum  of  Vendome ;  this  vexed  me  some- 
what, bscause  I  had  begun  my  thesis  on  Averroes 
and  Averroism  ;  M.  Cousin  and  M.  Le  Clerc  were 
so  kind  as  to  take  an  interest  in  the  matter.  I 
applied  to  M.  Cousin,  who  replied  to  me  in  a  brief 
note  which  ran  nearly  as  follows  :  "  If  it  is  a  ques- 
tion of  certifying  to  the  administration,  my  dear 
Renan,  that  Vendome  is  the  worst  place  in  the 
world  that  could  have  been  chosen  for  treating  of 
Averroes,  I  will  state  to  it  that  incontestable  truth." 
I  know  not  whether  Vendome  is,  in  point  of  fact, 
rich  in  old  books  of  philosophy.  But  I  must  say 
that  I  made  one  portion  of  my  thesis  in  those 
parts.  Having  gone  to  pass  a  few  months  at 
Saint  Malo,  a  city  which  is  not  much  more  learned 
than  Vendome,  I  found  there  a  library  formed  on 
the  basis  of  ancient  stores  from  convents,  where 
slumbered  beneath  a  thick  layer  of  dust  the  whole 
range  of  scholastic  writers  ;  the  editions  of  Aris- 
totle with  Averroes'  commentaries,  printed  at 
Venice,  the  indexes  of  Zimara,  a  good  share  of  the 


ERNEST  KENAN.  79 

glosses  of  the  Paduan  masters.  Ah !  certainly, 
they  had  not  been  read  for  a  long  time  !  Had 
they  ever  been  read,  indeed  ?  .  .  .  .  Be  that  as  it 
may,  it  was  among  these  dusty  volumes  that  I 
composed  many  chapters  of  my  history  of  Aver- 
roi'sm.  I  carried  away  the  conviction  that  if  one 
knows  how  to  make  a  thorough  search  one  will 
find  in  the  country  infinitely  more  numerous  ele- 
ments than  it  is  believed  for  historical  works  of 
general  interest. 

And  how  much  more  valuable  for  such  works 
are  the  peaceful  conditions  of  country  life  than  the 
narrow,  troubled,  unstable,  precarious  conditions 
of  life  in  Paris  !  One  of  the  necessities  of  erudi- 
tion is  a  vast  commodious  house,  where  one  has 
neither  moving  nor  disturbance  to  fear.  The  phil- 
ological sciences,  like  the  physical  sciences,  need 
laboratories  furnished  with  numerous  tables  to 
prevent  the  different  works  becoming  entangled, 
and  which  lend  themselves  to  those  personal 
arrangements  of  the  library  that  are  the  half  of 
scientific  labor.  Moreover,  love  of  the  truth  ren- 
ders a  man  solitary  ;  the  country  has  solitude,  re- 
pose, liberty. 

I  will  add  to  this  the  attractions  and  the  smile  of 
nature.  These  austere  labors  require  joy  of  spirit, 
leisure,  full  possession  of  one's  self.  A  pretty 
house  in  the  suburbs  of  a  large  city  ;  a  long  work- 
room, furnished  with  books,  hung  on  the  outside 
with  a  tapestry  of  Bengal  roses  ;  a  garden  with 


8o          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LE  TTERS  OF 

straight  alleys,  where  one  can  divert  one's  thoughts 
for  a  moment  with  one's  flowers  from  the  conver- 
sation of  one's  books;  none  of  these  things  are 
without  their  use  for  that  health  of  the  soul  which 
is  necessary  to  intellectual  work.  Unless  you  are 
a  millionaire,  then — which  is  rare  among  us — try 
to  have  all  this  in  Paris,  on  a  fourth  floor,  in  com- 
monplace houses  constructed  by  architects  who 
have  never  once  put  to  themselves  the  hypothesis 
of  a  literary  lodger  !  Our  libraries,  where  we  are 
so  fond  of  promenading  among  the  variety  of  our 
thoughts  and  our  books,  are  black  cabinets,  attics 
where  the  books  are  heaped  up  without  producing 
the  least  light.  Paris  has  the  College  of  France ; 
that  is  sufficient  to  attach  me  to  her.  But  cer- 
tainly, if  the  College  of  France  were,  like  an  abbey 
of  the  days  of  Saint  Bernard,  buried  in  the  depths 
of  woods,  with  long  avenues  of  poplars,  oak 
groves,  brooks,  rocks,  with  a  cloister  where  one 
might  walk  in  rainy  weather,  long  lines  of  useless 
rooms,  where  new  inscriptions,  molds,  new  prints, 
were  placed  on  long  tables  as  they  came,  one 
might  await  death  there  more  sweetly,  and  the 
scientific  production  of  the  establishment  would  be 
superior  to  what  it  is  at  present ;  for  solitude  is  a 
good  source  of  inspiration,  and  work  is  of  value 
in  proportion  to  the  calmness  with  which  it  is 
executed. 

We   should   exaggerate   our   theme,  we    should 
even  distort  it,  were  we  to  maintain  that  the  ad- 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  81 

vantages  for  scientific  culture  are  everywhere  the 
same.  All  cities  cannot  have  an  Institute,  a  Col- 
lege of  France,  an  observatory,  a  museum,  a 
.School  of  Charts.  Every  faculty  of  letters  cannot 
have  a  professorship  of  Arabic,  of  Egyptology,  of 
Assyriology.  There  is,  moreover,  a  certain  sort 
of  general  stimulation,  and,  if  I  may  venture  to 
say  so,  of  initiative  of  which  Paris  will  preserve 
the  secret  for  a  long  time  to  come.  The  seal  of 
the  highest  culture  can  be  acquired  only  at  Paris. 
But,  the  sacrament  once  received,  one  may  retain 
the  efficacy  and  the  perfume  of  it  for  a  long  while. 
The  zealous  Mussulman,  who  goes  to  the  holy 
cities,  does  not  impose  upon  himself  the  obligation 
to  live  there  ;  he  bears  about  with  him  everywhere 
the  sacred  fire  which  he  has  acquired  there,  the 
confirmation  which  he  has  received  there,  the 
spirit  which  has  been  communicated  to  him  there. 
Paris,  in  the  Middle  Ages,  was  the  center  of  intel- 
lectual education  for  the  whole  world — people 
formed  themselves  there,  but  did  not  remain 
there.  Each  man,  after  having  studied,  or  even 
taught  there,  returned  to  his  own  country  and 
developed,  after  his  own  fashion,  the  germ  with 
which  he  had  been  inoculated. 

Continue,  then,  gentlemen,  your  excellent  work  ; 
continue  to  enjoy  your  happiness,  which,  possibly, 
like  Virgil's  laborer,  you  do  not  appreciate  as  it 
deserves.  The  happiness  of  life  is  labor  accepted 
freely  as  a  duty.  This  is  a  fine  saying  in  Eccle- 


82          RECOLLECTIONS  AATD  LETTERS  OF 

siastes  :  Loetari  in  opere  suo — Rejoice  in  your 
work.  As  a  professor  of  the  Hebrew  language,  I 
am  obliged  to  state  that  the  shade  of  meaning  in 
the  original  is  not  precisely  this.  The  author,  in 
this  place,  desires  to  speak  of  the  legitimate  pleas- 
ure which  one  feels  in  leading  a  merry  life  with 
the  fortune  which  one  has  legitimately  acquired  by 
one's  toil.  But,  in  these  ancient  texts,  the  transla- 
tion is  frequently  better  than  the  original.  Lcetari 
in  opere  suo!  The  deep  satisfaction  which  scientific 
work  brings,  arises  from  the  assurance  that  one  is 
toiling  at  an  eternal  work,  of  which  the  object,  at 
least,  is  eternal ;  at  a  work  which  all  enlightened 
nations  are  pursuing  by  the  same  methods,  and 
from  which  they  are  obtaining  results  which  can  be 
compared  between  them. 

I  am  not  one  of  those  persons,  gentlemen,  who 
think  that  the  cultivation  of  the  mind  ought  to  be 
adapted  to  the  region.  The  human  mind  knows 
no  region.  The  true  method  has  nothing  local  or 
provincial  about  it.  There  is  but  one  chemistry, 
but  one  science  of  physics,  but  one  physiology  ; 
there  is,  also,  but  one  philology,  but  one  science  of 
criticism.  All  that  is  mere  literary  taste,  charm, 
poetry,  amusement,  religious  sensations,  memories 
of  childhood  and  of  youth,  may  clothe  itself  in 
local  form  ;  but  science  is  one,  like  the  human 
mind,  like  the  truth.  The  sick  man,  the  most  im- 
partial of  men,  because  he  desires  but  one  thing, 
namely,  that  he  may  be  cured,  would  never  apply 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  83 

to  regional  medicine,  if  such  a  thing  existed  ;  he 
will  always  be  for  the  medicine  without  an  epithet, 
the  genuine  one. 

The  highest  intellectual  product  of  each  province 
should  have  no  provincial  stamp.  All  one's  life, 
one  loves  to  recall  the  song  in  the  popular  dialect 
which  has  amused  one  in  one's  childhood  ;  but  no 
one  will  ever  make  science,  philosophy,  or  political 
economy  in  dialect.  Science,  in  the  scientific  or- 
der, should  not  consist  in  dividing  the  human  mind 
by  provinces  ;  it  should  consist  in  suppressing  the 
distinction  between  the  capital  and  the  provinces, 
in  making  of  all  intellectual  France  a  single  army, 
toiling  with  one  common  effort  for  the  advantage 
of  science,  reason,  and  civilization. 


SPEECH  AT  THE  FESTIVAL  OF  THE  FELIBRES, 
AT  SCEAUX,  JUNE  21,    189!. 

You  filled  my  heart  with  joy,  gentlemen,  when 
you  came,  a  few  days  ago,  to  seek  me  in  the  arm- 
chair to  which  old  age  has  confined  me,  to  associate 
me  with  your  festival.  I  am  very  fond  of  finding 
myself  with  people  who  still  understand  how  to 
amuse  themselves.  It  is  rare,  and  it  is  such  a  good 
thing.  After  much  reflection  upon  the  infinite 
which  surrounds  us,  I  have  come  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  clearest  thing  of  all  is  that  we  shall  never 
know  much.  But  an  infinite  goodness  permeates 


04          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

life,  and  I  am  persuaded  that  the  moments  which 
man  devotes  to  joy  must  be  counted  among  those 
in  which  he  answers  best  to  the  views  of  the 
Eternal. 

Florian,  your  patron,  and  his  great  master  Vol- 
taire, were  decidedly  of  this  opinion,  and  that  is 
why  all  this  pomp  of  festivity  enchants  me,  gentle- 
men. You  have  comprehended  that  that  which  re- 
joices the  heart  of  man,  while  it  makes  it  better,  is 
inseparable  from  that  which  recalls  to  him  his  child- 
hood and  the  land  where  he  has  first  been  happy. 
Every  man's  merit  is  in  proportion  to  the  joys 
which  he  has  tasted  at  his  entrance  into  life,  and 
to  the  quantity  of  goodness  which  he  has  found 
round  about  him.  The  language  in  which  we  have 
uttered  our  first,  stammering  words,  the  song  in 
local  dialect  which  we  have  heard  sung  at  the  age 
of  fifteen,  a  thousand  details  dear  to  the  heart, 
which  recall  to  us  our  beginnings,  our  humble  but 
honest  origin,  make  of  our  natal  land  a  sort  of 
mother  toward  whose  bosom  we  always  turn. 
Memory  is,  for  every  man,  a  part  of  his  moral 
being ;  woe  to  him  who  has  no  memories  ! 

Hence  you  are  doing  something  eminently  good, 
healthy,  and  salutary,  gentlemen,  in  grouping  your- 
selves round  this  flag  of  your  native  land,  which  is 
loved  for  the  most  widely  different  reasons,  but 
which  symbolizes  nothing  but  what  is  pacific  and 
pure.  The  Breton  loves  his  Brittany,  where  he  has 
been  poor,  precisely  because  he  has  been  poor. 


ERNEST  RE  NAN.  85 

The  Norman  loves  his  rich  and  luxuriant  Nor- 
mandy, because  it  possesses  all  the  gifts  of  earth 
and  sky  ;  the  Alsatian  loves  his  Alsace,  because 
it  suffers — and  you,  gentlemen,  love  this  radiant 
land,  antique  in  its  genius,  always  young  through 
its  generous  ideas,  rich  in  all  glories,  which  has,  on 
so  many  occasions,  given  to  the  greatest  thoughts 
of  the  French  fatherland  a  sonorous  expression 
that  the  whole  world  has  heard. 

It  is  a  natural  consequence  of  the  noble  and  dis- 
interested sentiment  with  which  you  are  inspired, 
gentlemen,  that  you  have  desired  to  associate  me, 
a  native  of  Lower  Brittany,  with  a  festival  intended 
to  commemorate,  amid  our  rather  gloomy  country, 
your  ardors  of  the  South,  your  Provengal  splen- 
dors. You  think  that,  at  the  present  day,  it  is  not 
a  question  of  contracting  but  of  enlarging  the 
circle.  In  loving  my  Brittany  and  joining  my  com- 
patriots, who  are  dear  to  me,  several  times  during 
the  year,  I  do  that  which  you  are  doing  now, 
gentlemen.  We  are  engaged  in  the  same  work  : 
in  preserving  for  the  heart  its  deepest  delights,  in 
preventing  man  from  uprooting  himself  completely 
from  the  soil  whereon  he  was  born,  in  saving  what 
simple  joys  of  the  soul  still  remain  in  the  midst  of 
a  life  that  the  complicated  cares  of  modern  society 
have  somewhat  robbed  of  their  colors. 

My  friend  M.  Quellien,  the  founder  of  the  Celtic 
Dinner,  has  ideas  on  this  subject  which  are  the 
inspiration  of  downright  genius.  Quellien  pos- 


86          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LE  TTERS  OF 

sesses  an  ethnography  which  belongs  to  himself 
alone.  Everybody  is  a  Celt,  in  his  eyes.  I  have 
seen  at  his  dinner  Lithuanians,  Hungarians,  Poles, 
Negroes.  In  the  month  of  April  there  is  a  Pardon, 
after  the  fashion  of  Brittany,  where  everyone  can 
be  a  Breton  once  a  year.  You,  also,  desire  that 
everyone  should  be  a  native  of  the  South  once  a 
year.  Thanks  for  having  given  me  this  delightful 
day  by  your  invitation. 

Science,  abstract  thought  in  search  of  the  truth, 
have  no  provinces,  nor  even  any  country.  But 
poetry,  song,  prayer,  contentment,  sadness,  are  in- 
dissolubly  bound  up  with  the  language  of  our 
childhood.  Life  has  many  degrees  ;  the  life  of  the 
whole  takes  nothing  from  the  intensity  of  the  life 
of  the  constituent  elements.  The  bond  which  at- 
taches us  to  France,  to  humanity,  does  not  diminish 
the  strength  and  the  sweetness  of  our  individual 
and  local  sentiments.  The  conscience  of  the 
whole  is  not  the  extinction  of  the  conscience  of 
the  parts  ;  it  is  the  result  of  it,  the  complete  blos- 
soming of  it. 

It  is  through  the  very  depths  of  our  French 
unity  that  we  sympathize,  that  we  understand  each 
other.  The  same  arteries  have  nourished  us  be- 
fore our  birth  ;  we  loved  each  other  when  we 
came  into  the  world.  I  remember  well  that,  long 
before  I  left  Brittany,  I  thought  of  Provence,  my 
imagination  dreamed  of  your  "Gai  Savoir"  and  of 
your  Isles  of  Gold.  My  mother  had  an  old  book 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  87 

which  she  called  "  The  Canticles  of  Marseilles." 
She  was  very  fond  of  it ;  I  have  it  still  ;  it  contains 
charming  things. 

I  was  twenty. five  years  of  age  when  I  traversed, 
for  the  first  time,  that  country  which  I  had  known, 
hitherto,  only  through  books.  Heavens  !  What  a 
revelation  for  me  !  I  had  never  beheld  any  moun- 
tains. On  the  morning  when  I  awoke  in  the 
midst  of  the  mountains  of  Forez,  the  dentelated 
horizon  filled  me  with  amazement.  Lyons  became 
from  that  moment  one  of  the  cities  which  I  love  the 
most.  I  descended  the  Rhone  in  one  day,  from 
Lyons  to  Avigno-n.  What  enchantment  !  In  the 
morning,  at  four  o'clock,  the  dense  fogs  of  the 
quays  of  Perrache  ;  atVienne,  the  beginning  of  the 
day  ;  at  Valence,  a  new  heaven,  the  real  threshold 
of  the  South  ;  at  Avignon,  a  luminous  evening. 
It  was  the  5th  of  October,  1849.  I  was  so  charmed 
with  it  that,  eight  years  later,  I  wished  to  take 
the  same  voyage  with  my  wife.  I  was  obliged  to 
have  recourse  to  obstinacy.  At  Lyons,  they  in- 
sisted that  the  boats  no  longer  ran.  We  discovered 
one,  nevertheless,  which  still  transported  the 
coarsest  kinds  of  merchandise.  It  consented  to 
take  us  ;  the  discomfort  surpassed  everything  that 
can  be  imagined,  but  we  were  in  ecstasies. 

Since  then  your  Provence  has  become  the  land 
of  my  preference  when  I  wish  to  make  a  mental 
journey  into  the  past.  Aries,  Montmajour,  Saint 
Gilles,  Orange,  form  part  of  my  frames  of  imagina- 


88          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

tion  for  antiquity  and  the  Middle  Ages.  Your 
poetry  of  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries  is 
one  of  the  most  beautiful  classic  apparitions  with 
which  I  am  acquainted.  Greece  is  far  away,  but 
we  have  on  our  own  soil  a  Greece  as  good  as 
Attica  and  the  Peloponessus— that  admirable  shore 
which  extends  from  the  mouth  of  the  Rhone  to 
Vintimille,  Marseilles  in  particular  ;  which  bears 
such  a  strong  resemblance  to  the  shores  of  Hellas 
that  the  mariners  of  Phocaea  were  deceived  by  it  and 
thought  themselves  at  home. 

Have  I  renounced  the  intention  of  making 
yet  one  more  visit  to  those  enchanted  lands  ? 
It  would  pain  me  to  confess  as  much  even  to 
myself.  No  ;  I  shall  behold  your  beautiful  coun- 
try once  more.  I  have  never  been  to  Aigues- 
Mortes,  to  Saint  Remi,  to  Bau,  to  the  source  of  the 
Vaucluse.  And  then,  I  wish  to  embrace  Mistral 
in  his  own  home  ;  I  shall  go  to  Maillane.  Each 
year,  I  pass  three  months  on  the  seacoast,  in  the 
depths  of  my  dear  Brittany.  Oh  !  it  is  a  great  joy 
to  me.  I  find  there  a  multitude  of  little,  old  ac- 
quaintances, birds,  flowers,  young  girls,  exactly 
like  those  who  pleased  me  in  days  gone  by  with 
their  little  air  of  discretion  and  modesty.  But  the 
sun  ?  .  .  .  .  Ah  !  it  is  rare  in  those  parts,  and 
rather  pale.  The  mists  are  delightful,  but  the  sun 
is  life.  I  shall  go  and  ask  you  for  it.  If  I  were 
rich  enough  to  have  two  country  houses  under  the 
open  sky,  it  is  among  you  that  I  would  have  a 


ERNEST  RENAN.  89 

winter  retreat.  I  do  not  dream  of  such  an  excess 
of  luxury  ;  but  you  shall  search  out  for  me,  at 
some  point  of  your  Greek  shore,  a  very  tranquil, 
very  sunny  nook,  with  two  or  three  parasol  pines 
where  I  may  go,  from  time  to  time,  to  seek  a  little 
lubricating  medium  for  my  impoverished  muscles, 
and  my  unsoldered  joints. 

I  feel  a  scruple  at  retarding  too  greatly,  by  a 
long  speech,  your  patriotic  exercises  and  your. 
pleasures.  I  am  in  haste  to  witness  those  exqui- 
site diversions.  I  feel  in  a  hurry  to  assist  at  your 
"  Court  of  Love,"  which  makes  me  dream.  What 
can  it  be?  And  your  farandole?  And  the 
tarasque?  I  do  not  wish  to  lose  anything,  even  if  I 
must  reach  Paris  at  an  unseasonable  honr. 

By  your  gayety,  your  dash,  your  true  and  just 
sentiment  of  life,  you  furnish  an  admirable  correct- 
ive to  our  maladies  of  the  North — that  pessimism, 
harshness,  avidity  for  self-torture,  that  subtlety 
which  prompts  people  who  are  still  young  to  ask 
themselves  if  love  is  sweet,  if  science  is  true,  if 
roses  are  beautiful !  You  know  how  to  laugh  and  to 
sing  ;  you  sing  equally  well  in  two  languages.  Let 
us  then,  my  dear  friends,  bless  the  day  which  made 
us  brothers,  in  spite  of  the  evil  chances  of  history. 
That  was  a  good  day. 

It  is  understood  that,  henceforth,  the  Bretons 
are  to  be  welcome  among  the  Felibres,  and  the 
Felibres  among  the  Bretons.  The  kingdom  of 
Is  is  the  brother  of  the  kingdom  of  Aries,  and 


9°          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

there  is,  also,  a  domain  that  is  common  to  both  of 
us,  the  realm  of  faerie — the  only  good  one  which 
exists  on  earth.  There  King  Arthur  has  been  de- 
tained for  more  than  a  thousand  years,  by  bonds 
of  flowers.  The  four  white  unicorns  who  bore  him 
away  stand  harnessed  ;  at  a  sign,  they  will  carry 
you  away. 

Long  live  the  South,  gentlemen  ;  the  South  which 
.at  all  epochs  has  furnished  so  capital  a  share  to 
the  selection  of  French  genius  !  Long  live  that  poor 
Brittany  which  you  have  summoned  to  your  festival ! 
And  then,  long  live  Paris,  the  only  city  in  the  world 
where  what  is  going  on  to-day  is  possible  :  Paris, 
the  city  in  common  of  the  panegyrists,  where  the 
Breton  holds  his  Pardons,  the  Southerner  his 
Felibriges  ;  where  each  one  expresses  the  poetry  of 
his  natal  land,  sings  its  local  glories,  regrets  his 
village,  curses  centralization  at  his  ease  ;  Paris, 
where  each  province  lives  and  flourishes  more  ac- 
tively sometimes  than  at  home;  where  the  most 
varied  sentiments  are  all  translated  into  good 
French  ;  a  very  delectable  tongue,  when  it  is  ma- 
nipulated by  artists  like  yours,  gentleman. 

Long  live  our  dear  French  land,  mother  of  these 
diversities,  all  amiable,  all  excellent  in  their  own 
way  !  Your  association  holds  the  first  rank, 
among  so  many  other  manifestations  of  con- 
sciences, which  have  vanished,  in  appearance,  but 
which  come  to  life  again  in  this  century  of  the 
resurrection  of  the  dead.  It  owes  its  rank  to  your 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  91 

sagacity,  to  your  breadth  of  mind.  It  is  this 
particular  gift  of  accessibility,  of  openness,  of  cour- 
tesy, to  which  1  am  indebted  for  the  favor  which 
you  have  done  me,  and  which  will  be  reckoned 
among  my  most  cherished  memories.  I  am  old  ;  I 
have  reached  the  time  of  life  when  one  must  think 
of  furnishing  one's  head  with  thoughts  which  will 
occupy  him  during  life  eternal.  It  will  be  long  !  I 
think  that  it  is  the  latest  images  which  will  be 
the  most  tenacious  and  will  fill  our  immortal  soul 
during  the  endless  centuries  to  come.  Well  !  At 
this  moment,  I  have  charming  images  before  my 
eyes  ;  I  will  guard  them  jealously  ;  I  will  place 
your  Felibrige,  your  Troubadours  festival,  of  1891 
among  the  things  of  which  I  shall  think  during  all 
eternity. 


MEMORIES  OF  THE   "JOURNAL  DES  DEBATS." 

I  WAS  brought  into  relations  with  the  editors  of 
the  Journal des  Debats  in  April  or  May,  1853.  The 
occasion  of  it  was  as  follows.  The  new  edi- 
tion of  the  Arabic  commentary  of  the  great 
Orientalist,  Silvestre  de  Sacy,  on  the  "  Sessions  of 
Hairi,"  had  just  appeared,  through  the  courtesy  of 
Messrs.  Reinaud  and  Derenbourg.  M.  Ustazade* 

*  Silvestre  de  Sacy,  being  a  Jansenist  and  an  Orientalist, 
had  read  the  "  Acts  of  the  Eastern  Martyrs,"  among  which 
Saint  Ustazade  is  one  of  the  most  celebrated.  He  gave  this 


92          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

Silvestre  de  Sacy,  son  of  the  illustrious  savant, 
bad  been  director  of  the  Journal for  several  years  ; 
he  requested  M.  Reinaud  to  designate  to  him 
some  one  among  his  pupils  who  could  give  an 
account,  in  the  Journal,  of  his  father's  masterly 
work.  -  M.  Reinaud  was  so  kind  as  to  think  of  me. 
I  went  to  present  my  article  to  M.  Ustazade,*  who 
was  pleased  with  it.  He  noticed  a  certain  choice- 
ness  of  language,  and  he  was  so  kind  as  to  engage 
me  to  treat,  in  the  Journal,  those  subjects  which 
came  within  the  limits  of  my  studies,  or  which  sug- 
gested to  me  some  thought. 

It  seems  that  the  religious  opinions  of  M. 
de  Sacy  should  have  formed  an  obstacle  to  all  sym- 
pathy between  him  and  me.  There  was  nothing  of 
the  sort,  however  ;  M.  de  Sacy  soon  saw  clearly, 
that  in  abandoning  positive  religious  beliefs,  I  had 
retained  all  which  was  not  stamped,  in  my  eyes, 
with  the  seal  of  absolute  decay.  He  divined  the 
living  trunk  and  roots,  behind  the  withered 
branches.  The  religion  of  M.  de  Sacy,  on  his  side, 
was  far  more  the  perfume  which  lingers  behind  a 
vanished  belief  than  a  firm  adhesion  to  definite 
dogmas.  He  perceived  my  sincerity.  We  pos- 
sessed in  common  that  taste  for  serious  things, 

name  to  his  eldest  son,  no  doubt  with  some  latent  thought  of 
the  worship  which  the  Jansenists  were  fond  of  devoting  to  un- 
known saints. 

*  It  was  by  this  name  that  M.  de  Sacy  was  always  designated 
in  the  private  circles  of  his  Journal. 


ERNEST  KENAN.  93 

which  we  had  acquired,  he  in  his  Jansenist  family,  I 
in  the  Seminary  of  Saint  Sulpice.  The  best  trans- 
lations of  the  seventeenth  century,  reduced  to  peace, 
met  and  exchanged  the  kiss  of  reconciliation  in 
us. 

M.  de  Sacy  had,  in  fact,  preserved  the  bonds 
which  united  him  to  his  father's  old  sect ;  rather  the 
bonds  of  the  heart  than  those  of  the  formulas.  He 
was  a  respectful  but  independent  Catholic.  He 
saw,  very  plainly,  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of  be- 
lief ;  he  did  not,  in  the  least,  seek  to  avoid  seeing 
them.  He  did  not  stop  there,  but  he  considered 
it  very  good  for  people  to  stop  there.  He  did 
not  like  apologists,  he  detested  the  hypocrites  of 
orthodoxy.  The  intermediate  deists,  after  the 
fashion  of  M.  Cousin,  satisfied  him  no  better.  He 
often  said  to  me  that  the  God  of  M.  Saisset  was 
the  one  whom  he  understood  the  least.  The  sects 
which  are  approaching  their  end  almost  all  arrive 
at  this  dogmatic  latitude.  The  moral  education 
of  believing  generations  remains  ;  the  letter  of  the 
creeds  melts  away,  and  leaves  behind  it  only  the 
solid  faith  in  duty  which  results,  by  a  sort  of  hered- 
ity, from  sectarian  discipline  long  continued. 

Jansenism,  to  tell  the  truth,  has  been  much  more 
of  a  school  of  virtue  than  a  school  of  theology. 
The  heresy  of  Jansenius,  if  there  ever  was  any 
heresy,  had  reached  the  point  of  designating 
nothing  more  than  the  manners  of  a  grave,  stu- 
dious bourgeoisie,  which  was  but  little  worldly  in 


94          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

its  habits,  and  tolerably  analogous  to  the  ancient 
society  of  Calvin,  but  less  pedantic  and  less  stiff. 
M.  Ustazade  told  me  that  one  of  the  clauses  in  his 
mother's  marriage  contract  claimed  that  her  hus- 
band could  never  force  her  to  wear  bonnets.  M. 
Silvestre  de  Sacy's  rare  merit  caused  them  to 
prophesy  that  he  would  attain  a  very  lofty  social 
rank  ;  ancient  customs  were  taking  their  precau- 
tions against  all  possible  chances  of  fortune.  M. 
Ustazade  retained  these  habits  of  exquisite  sim- 
plicity. In  accordance  with  an  improper  custom, 
which  is  almost  universal,  he  might  have  borne  the 
title  of  nobility  which  Napoleon  I.  had  conferred 
on  his  father.  He  never  did.  A  delicious  sim- 
plicity of  manners  and  language  was  the  true  title 
of  nobility  which  he  possessed  from  his  plebeian 
and  Parisian  origin.  He  had  a  sort  of  aversion  for 
anything  that  might  have  given  him  the  appearance 
of  a  man  of  the  world.  He  did  not  like  to  go  to 
watering-places  for  his  health  ;  he  said  that  those 
cures  were  reserved  for  princes,  for  the  nobility, 
and  that  the  bourgeoisie  ought  to  content  itself 
with  old  fashioned  medicines — the  best,  perhaps — 
with  cauteries,  purging,  and  bleeding. 

I  often  spoke  to  him  about  the  gravity  of  the 
gentlemen  at  Saint  Sulpice,  and,  forgetting  utterly 
that  Saint  Sulpice  had  treated  the  Jansenists  very 
badly  in  former  days,  he  was  delighted  at  what  I 
told  him  concerning  this  prolongation  of  ancient 
customs.  He  transmitted  to  me,  on  his  side,  recol- 


ERNEST  REXAN.  95 

lections  of  the  life  of  which  he  had  been  a  witness. 
M.  de  Sacy,  the  elder,  had  been  an  excellent  man, 
beneath  his  cold,  reserved  exterior.  His  son  con- 
firmed what  I  had  already  learned  from  M. 
Reinaud,  that,  all  his  life,  he  had  taken  pleasure  in 
the  society  of  young  women  who  united  a  delicate 
wit  to  the  sensibility  of  their  age.  The  austere 
savant  rarely  went  out  in  the  evening.  M.  Usta- 
zade  loved  to  recall  those  long  evenings  in  the 
family  circle.  M.  de  Sacy,  the  elder,  busied  himself 
with  Arabic,  or  reviewed  the  accounts  of  the 
benevolent  society  of  his  quarter,  by  the  aid  of  the 
compartments  in  a  sort  of  checker-board,  while  his 
daughters,  his  sisters,  and  his  aunts  copied  printed 
books.  That  was  one  way  of  passing  the  evening 
in  this  Jansenist  society.  The  senses  and*  the  im- 
agination were  thus  suitably  occupied  ;  moreover, 
they  served  the  interests  of  the  sect  by  dissemi- 
nating copies  of  books  the  circulation  of  which  was 
impeded  by  the  authorities.  M.  Ustazade  retained 
a  lively  taste  for  reading  all  his  life,  in  consequence. 
"A  good  old  book,"  as  he  said,  consoled  him  for 
everything.  One  of  our  colleagues  having  become 
rich,  by  I  know  not  what  chance,  could  hit  upon 
but  one  way  of  proving  his  gratitude  to  him  :  it 
was,  to  pay  court  to  his  library.  He  gave  him 
Fenelon  splendidly  bound,  so  splendidly  bound 
that  M.  de  Sacy  took  me  into  his  confidence  in 
regard  to  it.  When  he  wished  to  re-read  the 
"  Letter  on  the  Works  of  the  Academy  "  or  the 


g6          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

"  Treatise  on  the  Education  of  Girls,"  he  borrowed 
the  copy  belonging  to  the  Mazarin  Library,  of 
which  he  was  the  curator,  in  order  to  leave  the 

copy  which  Monsieur  B had  given  him  in  its 

pristine  hue,  in  its  absolute  virginity. 

M.  Ustazade  revised  my  articles  with  the  great- 
est  care.  I  read  them  to  him,  and  he  made  com- 
ments on  their  style,  which  have  been  the  best 
lesson  in  style  that  I  have  ever  had.  As  I  read,  I 
raised  my  eyes  furtively  at  certain  passages  to  see 
if  they  passed  without  difficulty.  I  always  yielded 
when  the  religious  or  literary  law  of  this  excellent 
master  was  transgressed.  In  the  matter  of  a  cer- 
tain passage  which  I  had  written  about  the  devil, 
he  was  inflexible,  and  insisted  that  in  the  present 
state  of  our  religious  legislation  the  devil  is  entitled 
to  consideration.  He  withdrew  his  objection  every 
time  that  I  proved  to  him  that  what  I  had  said  con- 
tained nothing  derogatory  to  the  liberty  of  person. 
I  must  confess  that,  with  my  theologian's  subtlety, 
I  invented  turns  which  deluded  him.  I  some- 
times smiled  at  the  heresies  which  I  made  him 
countersign.  In  literature,  he  was  a  pure  classic; 
he  considered  Lucretius  a  bad  poet ;  he  could  not 
bear  to  have  the  texts  to  which  he  was  accustomed 
altered,  even  to  improve  them  ;  and  he  admitted  to 
me  that  when  a  history  like  Roman  history  has 
given  rise  to  very  well  turned  phrases,  that  history 
ought  to  be  fixed,  once  for  all,  against  the  attacks 
of  criticism. 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  97 

We  could  not  come  to  an  understanding  on  this 
point  ;  but  he  knew  French  so  admirably  !  He 
had  such  an  exact  sense  of.  the  bearing  of  each 
word  !  He  corrected  so  well  the  juvenile  inexpe- 
riences of  my  manner  of  writing  !  I  came  to  make 
a  practice  of  leaving,  in  my  first  copy,  a  great  many 
points  upon  which  I  had  my  doubts,  being  fully 
resolved  to  cut  them  out  at  the  first  sign  of  discon- 
tent on  his  part. 

The  Journal  des  Debats  was  a  real  religion  to  M. 
Ustazade,  and  he  neglected  no  means  to  inculcate 
this  upon  me.  It  is  to  him  that  I  owe  the  idea,  which 
took  deep  root  in  me,  that  one  must  never  leave 
the  Journal  des  Debats  for  any  reason  on  earth. 
He  related  terrible  stories  in  this  connection.  He 
enumerated  to  me  those  persons  who,  in  conse- 
quence of  some  aberration,  had  abandoned  the 
journal,  and  proved  to  me  that  all  of  them  had 
come  to  a  bad  end.  One  had  fallen  into  financial 
errors  ;  another  into  social  errors  ;  a  third  into  a 
dangerous  opposition ;  then  all,  from  error  to 
error,  had  fallen  into  demagogy,  and  from  dema- 
gogy into  misery,  which  is  really  death  and  the 
cessation  of  life. 

These  examples  made  a  great  impression  on  me, 
and  from  that  time  forth  one  of  the  fundamental 
principles  of  my  life  has  been — one  never  leaves 
the  Journal  des  Debats.  Arrived  now  at  the  end 
of  my  life,  I  recognize  how  entirely  right  he  was, 
and  I  am  anxious  to  transmit  this  good  doctrine  to 


9$         RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

those  who  shall  come  after  me.  The  friendship 
which  I  find  in  this  excellent  establishment  is  one 
of  the  joys  of  my  old'age — one  of  the  consolations 
of  my  declining  years. 

I  am  indebted  to  M.  de  Sacy  also  for  several  of 
the  moral  precepts  which  I  have  always  followed. 
In  particular,  I  owe  to  him  the  rule  never  to  reply 
to  journalistic  attacks,  not  even  when  they  contain 
the  greatest  atrocities.  On  this  point  he  agreed 
with  the  opinion  of  M.  Guizot,  that  no  calumny 
reaches  its  mark  because  he  disdained  them  all. 
To  the  various  cases  when  exception  should  pos- 
sibly be  made,  which  I  suggested  to  him,  he 
replied  :  "  Never,  never,  never."  I  think  that  I 
have  conscientiously  followed  the  advice  of  my  old 
master  on  this  point,  as  well  as  on  many  others. 
One  journal  published,  in  facsimile,  a  pretended 
autograph  of  mine,  of  a  nature  really  to  overwhelm 
me  with  ridicule  had  it  been  authentic.  I  said 
nothing,  and  I  did  not  perceive  that  it  had  done  me 
any  harm.  In  the  same  manner  I  opposed  silence 
only  to  the  accounts  of  conversations  which  would 
have  lasted  a  week,  and  which  contained  not  a 
word  of  truth  ;  to  recitals  of  dinners  and  breakfasts 
furnished  by  some  person  who  had  never  received 
so  much  as  a  glass  of  water  in  my  house.  I  per- 
mitted them  to  print,'  without  complaint,  that  I  had 
received  a  million  from  M.  de  Rothschild  for 
writing  my  "  Life  of  Jesus."  I  hereby  announce  in 
advance  that  I  shall  not  object  when  they  publish 


ERNEST  RENAtf.  99 

the  facsimile  of  the  receipt.  M.  de  Sacy  will  be 
satisfied  with  me,  as  he  observes  me  from  the 
height  of  heaven.  Those  who  require,  for  the 
apology  of  their  dogma,  to  make  me  out  a  very 
black  being,  will  always  find  means  to  furnish 
themselves  with  arguments.  "  You  will  not  be 
believed,  fair  sirs."  I  am  persuaded  that  the  en- 
lightened* men  of  the  future  will  see  the  truth 
clearly,  so  far  as  I  am  concerned,  in  despite  of  all 
calumnies.  And  moreover,  how  indifferent  one 
will  become  to  all  the  errors  of  literary  history  in 
the  bosom  of  the  Eternal  Father ! 

M.  de  Sacy's  counsel  was  truth  itself  then.  Is 
it  so  to-day  ?  The  rule  which  my  venerable  master 
preached  to  me  was  excellent  at  ail  epoch  when 
there  existed  an  enlightened  society  which  formed 
its  opinions  in  a  rational  manner.  It  would  be 
dangerous  in  a  democracy.  The  masses,  in  fact, 
are  naturally  credulous;  their  first  impulse  is  to 
accept  what  is  told  them.  Methodical  doubt  is 
what  they  comprehend  the  least.  Habituated  to 
rough  ways,  they  believe  that  the  insult  which  is 

*  I  say  enlightened,  because  the  following  course  of  reason- 
ing will,  on  the  other  hand,  appear  very  solid  to  mediocre 
minds.  "  It  is  stated  by  good  authors,"  they  will  say,  "  that 
Renan  received  a  million.  His  partisans  insist  that  he  re- 
ceived nothing  at  all.  The  truth  probably  lies  between  these 
two  extremes.  Let  us  be  moderate  ;  he  received  several  hun- 
dred thousand  francs."  Decidedly,  let  us  strive  to  maintain  in 
the  drama  of  the  world  the  final  epilogue  of  the  valley  of 
Jehoshaphat. 


100        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

not  replied  to  is,  by  that  very  fact,  accepted  ;  for 
them,  some  effect  is  always  produced  by  it.  It 
sometimes  occurs  to  me  that,  at  the  present  moment, 
M.  de  Sacy  would  change  his  opinion.  Must  re- 
porters, for  example,  be  permitted  to  attribute  to 
you  things  a  thousand  miles  removed  from  what 
you  really  think  ?  The  question  is  a  delicate  one  ; 
in  fact,  if  you  announce  that  you  will  make  no 
reply,  they  will  make  you  speak,  all  the  same,  after 
their  own  fashion.  M.  de  Sacy  might  say  that, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  eternity,  all  this  amounts 
to  very  little  ! 

The  sentiment  with  which  these  intimate  rela- 
tions inspired  us  for  each  other  became  a  veritable 
friendship.  M.  de  Sacy  always  defended  me,  and 
was  the  principal  instigator  of  my  entrance  to  the 
French  Academy.  The  little  speech  which  he 
made  to  the  company,  to  set  forth  what  he  consid- 
ered to  be  my  claims,  was  so  lively,  so  frank,  so 
natural  in  style,  that  many  of  our  colleagues  fre- 
quently repeat  it  to  me,  and  know  it  by  heart. 
"  M.  Renan,"  he  said,  "  is  a  heretic  on  certain 
points  ;  I  do  not  deny  that.  But  I  should  like  to 
know  who  among  us  is  not  a  bit  of  a  heretic. 
You,  M.  de  Montalembert,  do  you  know  that  if  I 
were  inquisitor,  I  should  not  be  obliged  to  seek 
very  far  to  find  sufficient  grounds  for  burning 
you  ?  M.  de  Broglie,  is  your  faith  in  the  supernat- 
ural perfectly  in  accord  with  orthodoxy  ?  M.  de 
Falloux,  are  you  a  very  docile  lamb  in  the  fold  ?  " 


ERKEST  RENAN.  101 

And  he  concluded  with  these  words :  "  Let  us  all 
pardon  each  other,  reciprocally,  for  our  heresies." 
I  will  add  here  a  story  which  I  should  not  have 
recalled,  had  not  the  Princess  Mathilde  delighted 
to  relate  it.  One  day,  on  going  to  see  him  in  his 
little  house  of  Eau-bonne,  she  thought  she  saw  him 
conceal  under  the  table  a  book  which  he  was  read- 
ing. Knowing  the  princess's  liberal  spirit,  and 
perceiving  that  her  eyes  followed  the  book  with  a 
certain  curiosity,  he  showed  it  to  her.  It  was  the 
"  Life  of  Jesus."  "  Pardon  me,  princess,"  he  said, 
"  I  thought  it  was  Madame  de  Sacy  who  was  enter- 
ing." He  confessed  that  he  loved  this  book,  but 
that  he  only  read  it  on  the  sly  for  fear  of  being 
scolded. 

The  sudden  death  which  removed  M.  Artnand 
Berlin,  shortly  after  my  connection  with  the  Jour- 
nal began,  leaves  me  but  few  memories  of  him.  I 
only  saw  him  once,  in  his  apartment  in  the  Rue  de 
L'Universite".  He  repeated  to  me  what  the  elder 
M.  Berlin  was  in  the  habit  of  saying  to  beginners 
on  the  journal  :  "  Write  for  five  hundred  people, 
we  will  take  care  of  the  rest."  A  noble  journal, 
analagous  in  the  press  to  that  which  the  French 
Academy  is  in  literature  ;  a  journal  in  which  highly 
esteemed  men  could  write,  and  collaboration  in 
which  was  an  honor  ;  such  was  the  programme 
which  these  eminent  men  laid  out,  and  which  they 
realized,  by  dint  of  tact,  of  knowledge  of  men,  ot 
perseverance  and  of  skill. 


102        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

M.  Edouard  Berlin  had  one  of  the  most  com- 
plete and  just  minds  that  I  have  ever  known.  If  I 
do  not  speak  at  more  length  concerning  him,  it  is 
because  the  task  has  been  fulfilled  by  the  man 
whom  he  loved  the  most,  M.  Taine.  His  intelli- 
gence was  rare,  his  culture  of  the  very  highest. 
He  sometimes  ridiculed  a  little  that  taste  for  an- 
tiquity in  everything  which  M.  de  Sacy  cherished  ; 
he  smiled  at  his  Jansenism,  his  classicism.  M. 
de  Sacy  was  sensitive  to  these  petty  miseries  ;  he 
confided  this  to  me,  almost  with  tears.  M. 
Edouard  certainly  took  a  broader  view  of  things 
than  M.  de  Sacy.  He  knew  the  history  of  Italian 
art  like  a  scholar.  His  knowledge  of  Christian  lit- 
erature was  surprising.  Among  laymen,  he  was 
the  best  versed  in  questions  of  criticism  and  con- 
troversy that  I  have  ever  seen.  His  incredulity 
was  cleverly  reasoned  out.  His  skepticism  in  pol- 
itics was  the  result  of  a  perfect  course  of  reason- 
ing. .  During  the  siege  he  was  admirable.  No  illu- 
sion approached  him.  In  spite  of  his  failing 
health,  he  came  to  the  Journal  office  every  day. 
He  listened  kindly  to  the  most  absurd  news  ;  then, 
leaning  toward  me,  he  said  :  "  I  don't  believe  a 
word  of  it."  His  philosophy  was  curious  in  search 
of  the  true,  amiable,  and  resigned. 

Times  were  very  hard  indeed  for  the  press,  un- 
der the  Second  Empire.  One  was  obliged  to  be 
one's  own  censor  ;  one  endured  anguish  every 
day.  It  was  then  that  a  considerable  change  was 


EJRXEST   A'/-.Y.-4JV.  103 

effected  in  the  journal.  Politics  were  so  little 
open  to  free  discussion  that  the  life  they  should 
have  had  passed  into  the  literary  and  moral  arti- 
cles. Intelligent  readers  looked  on  the  third  page 
for  that  which  the  first  could  not  say.  The  miscel- 
laneous items  assumed  an  importance  which  they 
had  never  hitherto  enjoyed.  Down  to  that  epoch, 
the  items  had  been  anonymous  ;  they  expressed 
the  opinion  of  the  journal  as  a  whole.  The  author 
did  not  revise  the  proofs  of  them.  On  reading 
them  over  (it  was  M.  de  Sacy  who  told  me  this)  he 
often  experienced  strange  surprises.  Beginning 
with  the  first  years  after  the  coup  d'etat,  all  was 
changed.  The  miscellaneous  items  became  filled 
with  double  meanings,  one  felt  in  them  the  per- 
sonal responsibility,  the  original  air  of  the  author. 
The  form  of  them  became  much  more  polished  ; 
sometimes  it  was  even  too  much  so  perhaps  ;  the 
criticism  of  books  suffered  from  it.  The  public 
perused  these  little  scraps  attentively,  seeking  be- 
tween the  lines  that  which  the  author  had  not  been 
able  to  say  openly.  Thus,  under  the  semblance  of 
literature,  many  things  which  were  then  forbidden 
were  discussed  ;  the  loftiest  principles  of  liberal 
politics  were  advocated  by  insinuation. 

When  people  possess  liberty,  and,  especially, 
when  they  begin  to  abuse  it,  the  services  of  those 
who  have  conquered  it  for  them  are  speedily  for- 
gotten. Those  who  had  confessed  the  faith  under 
Diocletian  found,  under  Constantine,  that  they 


104       RECOLLECTIOXS  AXD  LETTERS  OF 

were  rather  neglected.  If  our  dear  Prevost- 
Paradol  were  still  alive,  I  think  he  would  find 
himself  the  victim  of  a  similar  injustice.  The 
talent,  the  passion,  the  skill  which  he  dis- 
played in  the  combat  were  something  extraordi- 
nary. His  facility  bordered  on  the  miraculous. 
Those  exquisite  articles  were  written  at  the  last 
moment,  without  a  single  erasure ;  the  foreman 
clipped  up  the  lines  as  fast  as  they  were  written, 
and  Prevost  did  not  see  them  again.  So  coura- 
geous, so  loyal  as  he  was  withal  ;  his  pretended 
conversion  to  the  Empire  was  not  in  the  least  the 
interested  caprice  that  it  was  asserted  to  be.  His 
death  had  no  significance,  either  political  or  moral  ; 
it  was  a  material  accident,  brought  about  by  the 
intense  heat  of  Washington  and  by  the  surprise 
which  the  American  regimen  of  iced  alcoholic 
drinks  occasioned  him.  I  thought  a  great  deal  of 
him,  and  he  thought  a  great  deal  of  me  ;  only  the 
world  loved  him  better  still,  and  M.  Thiers  was  like 
a  shutter  which  cut  off  half  the  sky  from  him.  An 
excellent  judge  will  tell  better  than  I  can  what  this 
rare  man  was  like,  and  what  he  would  have  been 
had  it  been  granted  him  to  see  the  years  which 
followed  1870. 

That  is,  also,  a  great  injustice  which  attaches  to 
the  firm  and  loyal  Laboulaye.  He  would  have 
liked  to  be  Minister  and  member  of  the  French 
Academy  ;  he  would  have  made  an  excellent  Min- 
ister, and  he  possessed  more  claims  to  the  Academy 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  105 

than  half  of  those  who  belong  to  it.  He  consoled 
himself  by  realizing  in  his  life,  by  dint  of  a  sus- 
tained effort,  the  ideal  of  an  honest  man.  I  do  not 
think  that  anyone  has  understood  and  practiced 
better  than  Laboulaye  the  rule  of  the  perfect  lib- 
eral. If  he  ever  sinned,  it  was  by  too  much  love 
for  liberty  !  Oh,  what  a  fine  fault,  and  how  sin- 
cerely I  pay  my  compliments  to  those  who  have 
never  committed  any  other  faults  than  this  ! 

Liberalism  was  the  religion  of  that  excellent 
generation.  Their  principles  were  so  fixed  that, 
on  the  day  after  the  catastrophe  which  seemed  to 
put  them  in  the  wrong,  they  remained  exactly  what 
they  had  been  on  the  day  preceding  the  catas- 
trophe. "  I  make  my  sincere  confession,"  said  M. 
de  Sacy.  "  I  have  not  changed.  Far  from  having 
been  shaken  in  my  convictions,  reflection,  age,  and 
experience  have  only  confirmed  me  in  them.  I 
believe  in  right  and  justice,  as  I  believed  in  them 
in  my  ingenuous  youth.  This  principle  of  liberty, 
which  the  times  and  circumstances  have  adjourned 
in  politics,  I  am  happy  to  recover  in  letters,  in 
philosophy,  in  all  that  belongs  to  the  domain  of 
conscience  and  pure  thought.  That  is  what  we 
try  to  do  in  the  Journal  des  Debats.  With  differ- 
ences of  shades  of  taste,  and  of  varied  opinions,  it 
is  the  spirit  which  unites  us  all." 

M.  Cuvillier-Fleury  might  have  said  that  quite  as 
well  as  M.  de  Sacy.  His  liberalism  never  suffered 
any  eclipse  ;  no  reaction  attacked  him.  He  loved 


106        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

ardently  that  which  he  believed  to  be  true.  His 
conversation  was  animated,  he  took  great  pains 
with  it,  for  it  was  one  way  of  accentuating  the  con- 
viction which  he  bore  in  his  heart.  Oh  !  what  a 
good  house  the  Debuts  was  then,  and  what  a 
memory  we  have  preserved  of  those  amiable  jousts 
of  words,  in  which  M.  de  Sacy.  and  M.  Cuvillier- 
Fleury  vied  with  each  other  in  wit,  dash,  and 
amiability  !  At  the  Academy  the  tourney  began 
again,  inoffensively  ;  both,  in  fact,  were  breaking  a 
lance  for  the  same  idea  ;  everything  which  was 
good,  noble,  generous,  caused  their  hearts  to 
vibrate. 

Their  patriotism  was  as  pure  as  the  feelings  of  a 
child.  Above  all  they  saw  France  ;  they  believed 
in  her,  they  adored  her.  Poor  France,  it  is  impos- 
sible that  she  should  perish  ;  she  has  been  too 
much  loved  ! 

What  would  happen  if  I  were  to  recall  here  M. 
Saint-Marc  Girardin,  Hippolyte  Rigault,  Jules 
Janin,  Michel  Chevalier,  Alboury,  Philarete  Chasles, 
whose  portrait  will  be  given  elsewhere,  by  the  bye, 
and  those  valiant  colleagues,  still  living,  of  whom 
the  law  of  this  memorial  forbids  us  to  speak  ?  M. 
Saint-Marc  Girardin  was  a  man  of  great  political 
sense.  His  speech,  strong  and  assured,  was 
heightened  by  a  lively  and  piquant  wit ;  he  intimi- 
dated me  a  little,  as  university  men  in  general  do. 
They  talk  too  well.  One  of  my  manias  is  to  make 
Incorrect  phrases  deliberately,  where  the  accent  of 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  107 

thought  bears  directly  on  the  incorrectness,  which 
renders  it  prominent.  Being  accustomed  to  repri- 
mand it  in  their  scholars,  professors  do  not  un- 
derstand this  apprehension  of  talking  like  a  book, 
and  consider  my  conversation  overladen  and  heaped 
up.  This  dear  Hippolyte  Rigault  was  a  little  of 
that  opinion,  I  imagine.  He  was  a  man  of  rare 
merit.  His  premature  death  caused  us  profound 
sadness.  Oral  exhibition  was  so  necessary  to  him 
that  he  died  when  it  was  prohibited  to  him. 
Through  the  fault  of  an  unintelligent  administra- 
tion of  Public  Instruction,  the  serious  press  and 
higher  tuition  were  deprived  of  a  man  of  great 
talent. 

Others  will  explain  better  than  I  can  the  dazzling 
facility  of  Jules  Janin.  I  admired  his  sparkling 
fancy  !  Nevertheless,  I  know  not  why,  his  brilliant 
atoms  never  cohered  in  a  durable  manner,  while  a 
sympathy,  mingled  with  a  sort  of  pity,  speedily 
attached  me  to  Philarete  Chasles,  that  extremely 
original  spirit,  that  sower  of  new  ideas,  who 
certainly  deserved  to  be  pardoned  for  a  few  slight 
irregularities.  People  were  severe  on  petty  defects ; 
they  did  not  perceive  grand  qualities.  The  extreme 
ardor  which  M.  Michel  Chevalier  brought  to  bear 
on  social  questions  made  people  forget,  on  the  other 
hand,  all  political  dissensions.  During  the  first 
half  of  the  Empire,  his  Saint-Simonian  optimism 
often  subjected  the  nerves  of  poor  Prevost-Paradol 
to  harsh  trials.  One  day  he  entered  beaming;  his 


lo8        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

first  words  were  :"  I  have  conquered  liberty " 

We  were  full  of  anticipations  ;  we  demanded  ex- 
planations. It  was  a  question  of  the  liberty  of  the 
slaughter-house But  he  really  loved  prog- 
ress ;  everyone  admitted  that  he  possessed  great 
valor  and  warmth  of  heart. 

Thus  upholding  each  other,  we  traversed  gayly 
those  melancholy  years  which  elapsed  between  the 
coup  c£6tat  and  the  year  1860,  or  thereabouts.  A 
better  influence  then  began  to  come  into  play. 
Governments,  in  general,  improve  with  age  ;  un- 
fortunately, they  are  not  allowed  sufficient  time. 
The  second  half  of  the  Empire  was  far  less  bad 
than  the  first.  The  new  government  had  recom- 
pensed its  accomplices  and  paid  its  expenses  of 
setting  up.  It  was  now  permissible  for  it  to  think 
of  the  public  welfare.  The  personal  character  of 
Napoleon  III.,  the  very  open  mind  of  Prince  Napo- 
leon, and  of  the  Princess  Mathilde,  made  them- 
selves  felt  better  than  at  the  epoch  when  the 
Empire  was  enduring  with  difficulty  the  tutelage 
of  its  first  patrons.  One  could  speak  of  a  liberal 
Empire  as  of  a  hope  ;  a  feeble  hope,  it  is  true,  but 
still  preferable  to  so  many  other  chimerical  or  fatal 
hypotheses.  The  liberal  Empire  committed  one 
unpardonable  sin — war  ;  after  all,  however,  it  proba- 
bly granted  the  greatest  amount  of  liberty  that  it 
is  permitted  to  realize  in  France  without  provok- 
ing excesses  ;  God,  that  is  to  say  history,  will 
have  mercy  upon  it.  The  liberal  Empire  suffered 


EXA7EST  RENAN,  109 

shipwreck  just  as  all  governments  in  France,  for 
the  last  hundred  years,  have  suffered  shipwreck. 
But,  in  a  shipwreck,  one  does  not  disdain  the 
chicken-coop  which  presents  itself  within  reach  of 
one's  hand.  One  clutches  hold  of  what  one  can  : 
the  hour  of  rescue  is  not  the  moment  to  exhibit 
squeamtshness.  This  is  how  it  happened  that 
many  of  us  accepted,  in  perfect  honesty,  the  latter 
years  of  that  Empire  which  they  did  not  love,  and 
applied  themselves  to  the  difficult  task  of  improv- 
ing it.  The  principle  of  the  Journal  des  Debats 
is  to  attach  itself  to  the  possible,  and  to  prefer 
modest  chances  to  adventurous  investments.  We 
accepted  the  liberal  Empire  on  the  same  princi- 
ple which  has  compelled  us  to  accept  so  many 
other  things  which  we  did  not  like,  but  which 
forced  themselves  upon  us,  through  a  fear  of  worse. 
We  did  well  ;  I  thought  so,  at  least,  and  to-day  I 
think  so  more  than  ever.  In  1860  I  consented  to 
take  part  in  scientific  work,  which  they  were  trying 
to  restore.  In  1869  I  made  an  independent  elect- 
oral campaign,  in  the  department  of  Seine-et- 
Marne,  which  would  have  proved  successful,  had 
it  not  been  for  M.  Rouher  and  my  own  honesty. 

The  fault  which  we  were  led  to  commit  in  this 
instance,  if  fault  there  was,  it  is  probable  that  we 
shall  repeat  many  times  still.  Every  time  that  we 
behold  the  dawn  of  liberty  appear  we  shall  salute 
it.  Every  effort  which  presents  itself  as  possessing 
a  chance  of  conciliating  the  opposing  demands  of 


no       RECOLJ.ECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

politics,  we  shall  support.  Whose  fault  is  it  if  all 
this  ends  only  in  disappointments  ?  The  century's, 
not  ours.  The  really  constitutional  government  is 
not  improvised  ;  nations  arrive  at  it  when  they 
have  earned  it.  Had  we  a  very  strong  confidence 
in  the  liberal  Empire  ?  Did  we  hope  that  the 
personal  power  would  become — by  means  of  a  visi- 
ble transformation,  effected  before  our  very  eyes — 
that  constitutional  royalty,  the  most  perfect  of 
governments,  in  which  a  nation  enters  into  a 
century-long  compact  with  one  family,  and  may, 
at  certain  hours,  concentrate  itself  in  one  brain  ? 
Oh,  no,  certainly  not ;  we  hoped  little  ;  govern- 
ments sprung  from  adventures  are  strong  in  the 
evil  which  they  do  ;  when  they  begin  to  do  good, 
they  are  weak  ;  but  success  was  not  impossible, 
after  all.  That  which,  on  the  contrary,  presented 
itself  as  wholly  improbable,  was  authority  proceed- 
ing from  universal  suffrage,  respect  created  by  riot, 
order  emerging  from  anarchy. 

Have  the  events  which  followed  been  of  a  nature 
to  make  us  repent  of  having,  in  1868  and  1869, 
gone  to  meet  a  defeat  which  was  half  foreseen  ? 
We  ask  that  people  shall  have  the  kindness  to  wait 
twenty  years  before  blaming  us.  If,  between  this 
day  and  that,  a  constitutional  government  shall 
have  succeeded  in  founding  itself,  without  running 
off  the  rails  of  legality,  we  will  confess  that  we 
should  have  shown  ourselves  more  difficult  to 
please  toward  the  close  of  the  Second  Empire. 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  lit 

In  the  contrary  case,  we  must  be  pardoned  for 
having  believed  that  coups  d'ttat  and  revolutions 
are  the  worst  expedients  of  politics  ;  that  one  must 
make  the  most  of  what  one  has,  even  when  what 
one  has  is  rather  defective. 


LETTER    TO    M.    BERTHELOT,    MINISTER. 

PARIS,  December  31,  1886. 

My  Dear  Friend :  I  wish  to  pass  the  last  hours 
of  this  year  with  you.  While  you  are  enduring  the 
review  of  official  congratulations,  I  desire  to  return 
to  the  dreams  which  we  formed  forty  years  ago, 
when  we  knew  each  other  in  a  little  boarding- 
house  of  the  Faubourg  Saint  Jacques,  when  you 
were  eighteen  years  of  age,  and  I  was  twenty-two. 

Certainly,  if  you  had  been  Minister  then,  we 
should  have  reformed  the  world.  It  would  not 
have  lasted,  probably.  We  have  learned,  as  we 
grew  older,  that  the  patriarch  Jacob  was  a  genu- 
inely wise  man  in  thinking  that  the  pace  of  the 
last  little  lamb  which  has  just  been  born  should 
regulate  the  march  of  the  whole  flock. 

Many  things,  in  fact,  change  in  the  course  of 
forty  years,  and  yet,  at  the  bottom,  man  and  hu- 
manity change  very  little.  I  remember  that,  dur- 
ing the  hour  which  we  passed  together,  we  read, 
one  day,  the  story  of  that  hermit  of  the  Thebaid, 
who  had  retired  into  the  desert  in  his  youth,  and 


1 1 2        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LE  TTERS  OF 

passed  years  there  without  setting  eyes  on  a  hu- 
man being.  In  his  old  age,  on  receiving  a  visit 
from  a  monk  who  came  from  the  valley  of  the 
Nile,  he  was  seized  with  an  impulse  of  curiosity  : 
"  Tell  me,"  he  said  to  his  fellow-recluse,  "  if  men 
are  still  the  same.  Do  they  still  seek  to  acquire 
property?  Do  they  still  invent  calumnies  against 
each  other  ?  Do  they  build  houses  as  though  they 
were  to  live  two  hundred  years?  Do  they  still 
marry  ? "  The  visitor  replied  that  few  things  were 
changed  ;  and  the  hermit  marveled  that  man  was 
so  incurably  the  dupe  of  universal  vanity. 

We  think  that  a  capital  element  for  the  posses- 
sion of  the  true  philosophy  of  life  was  lacking  in 
those  recluses  of  the  desert — that  is,  knowledge  of 
the  world.  It  seems  to  us  of  the  utmost  impor- 
tance that  one  should  know  that  the  earth  is  a  ball, 
about  three  thousand  leagues  in  diameter,  that  the 
sun  is  thirty-eight  million  leagues  from  the  earth, 
and  that  it  is  one  million  four  hundred  thousand 
times  larger  than  the  earth,  and  a  thousand  other 
pieces  of  information  which  form  part  of  element- 
ary instruction.  And,  nevertheless,  the  recluse 
was  right,  in  his  own  way.  The  gravest  incidents 
in  human  affairs  have  no  more  importance,  when 
one  places  one's  self  at  the  point  of  view  of  the  solar 
system,  than  the  movements  in  a  wasp's  nest,  or 
the  hurrying  to  and  fro  that  goes  on  in  an  ant-hill. 
When  one  places  one's  self  at  the  point  of  view  of 
the  solar  system,  our  revolutions  possess  hardly 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  113 

the  amplitude  of  the  movements  of  atoms.  From 
the  point  of  view  of  Sirius,  they  have  still  less. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  the  infinite,  they  have 
none  at  all.  This  is  the  only  point  of  view  from 
which  one  can  judge  well  of  things  in  their  verity. 
In  my  "  Souvenirs  d'Enfance  "  I  have  quoted  the 
saying  of  the  old  Superior  of  Saint  Sulpice,  M. 
Duclos,  to  whom  a  seminary  pupil,  in  the  troubled 
years  which  followed  1830,  was  relating,  with 
terror,  the  doings  in  I  know  not  what  stormy  ses- 
sion of  the  Chamber  of  Deputies.  The  young 
man  was  particularly  struck  by  a  speech  of  M. 
Mauguin,  which  seemed  to  him  the  prelude  to  the 
end  of  the  world.  Those  bold,  irritating  Deputies 
of  the  Opposition  produced  on  these  peaceful 
ascetics  the  effect  of  downright  demons.  "  One 
sees  plainly,  my  friend,"  replied  M.  Duclos  tran- 
quilly, "  that  those  men  say  no  prayers."  In  fact, 
I  cannot  very  well  imagine  M.  Clemenceau  saying 
his  prayers  ;  M.  Laguerre,  who  is  so  young,  so 

dreamy,  so  charming,  perhaps The  prayer  of 

M.  Rochefort  seems  to  me  to  belong  to  the  sort 
which  the  fathers  of  spiritual  life  term  ejaculatory; 
that  stern  fighter  is  not  yet  quite  undeceived  as  to 
the  reality  of  things.  M.  Tony  Re"villon  also  does 
not  strike  me  as  having  arrived  at  the  Bud- 
dhistic soutra  of  the  concatenation  of  effects,  and 
of  the  complete  inanity  of  appearances.  But  one 
must  hot  take  fright  too  hastily.  M.  Mauguin's 
speech  did  not  make  the  world  crumble  to  pieces. 


114       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

The  world  dies  hard.  It  is  a  toy  with  which  one 
can  play  for  a  long  time  without  breaking  it. 

Our  dear  director  of  the  De'bats,  in  memory  of 
the  pretty  New  Year's  gifts  which  M.  Laboulaye 
used  to  make  to  the  subscribers  of  the  Journal, 
asked  me  last  year  for  a  dream  which  should 
please  everybody,  not  a  very  solid  dream,  perhaps; 
good  at  the  most  for  New  Year's  day.  It  was  not 
an  easy  task.  The  present  time  is  hardly  that  for 
dreams.  The  sky  is  gloomy  ;  the  Eternal  some- 
times has  the  air  of  being  disgusted  with  his  crea- 
tion, of  finding  it  tiresome  and  a  failure.  That  it 
certainly  is  not.  I  find  it,  as  I  grow  old,  more  as- 
tonishing than  ever.  But  it  is  certain  that  men 
are  too  much  divided.  That  which  enchants  some 
throws  others  into  consternation.  I  believe  that 
we  shall  never  behold  our  fellow-men  agreed  again 
on  any  subject  whatever.  In  order  to  bring  them 
into  accord,  one  must  deceive  them  ;  and  neither 
you  nor  I,  my  dear  friend,  will  undertake  that 
task. 

Last  year,  in  order  to  obtain  from  heaven  the 
credit  of  a  smile,  I  applied  to  the  angel  Gabriel, 
and  thought  myself  authorized  to  impart  to  the 
readers  of  the  Journal  des  Debats,  in  his  name,  that 
a  change  in  the  government  of  this  world  was  im- 
pending. The  disappointment  was  so  great  that  I 
have  declined  to  interrogate  the  celestial  messenger 
this  year.  You  are  Minister  ;  that  is  an  event  upon 
which  I  congratulate  the  Eternal  openly.  With  this 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  ng 

exception,  it  is  not  possible  to  be  more  completely 
mistaken  than  I  was  in  my  predictions.  I  had  an- 
nounced great  things  and  new  things  ;  I  had  said 
that  the  unexpected  must  be  expected,  and,  in 
point  of  fact,  the  state  of  the  world  on  this  3151 
of  December  differs  as  little  from  the  state  of 
the  world  on  the  ist  of  last  January  as  one  puddle 
differs  from  another  puddle,  or  one  drop  of  water 
from  another  drop  of  water.  The  grand  resolution 
which  I  had  assumed  that  the  Eternal  would  im- 
pose upon  his  functionaries  to  be  just,  exact,  at- 
tentive,  has  had  no  results.  A  frightful  negligence 
seems  to  reign  forever  in  the  offices  where  the  fate 
of  the  world  is  regulated.  The  celestial  policy 
which  was  announced  as  about  to  become  very 
definite,  has  been  more  obscure,  more  circumspect 
than  ever.  This  is  wise,  no  doubt  ;  but  hereafter 
I  shall  not  meddle  with  prophecies !  Great 
heavens !  how  did  the  ancient  prophets  manage 
rtever  to  make  a  mistake  ? 

In  default  of  the  secrets  of  the  angel  Gabriel,  I 
have  thought  of  asking  counsel  from  the  gods  of 
India.  They  are  very  good  gods,  whom  one  adores 
by  dreaming,  and  who  occasionally  give  us  admi- 
rable lessons  in  the  art  of  being  all  things  to  all 
men.  The  life  of  Krishna,  in  particular,  is  full  of 
good  examples  which  if  one  could  imitate  them, 
would  restore  to  this  century  that  which  it  no  longer 
possesses — joy,  sympathy,  concord. 

When  Krishna  arrived,  beaming  with  youth  and 


Il6       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

beauty,  in  the  meadows  of  Bradj,  all  the  shepherd- 
esses fell  madly  in  love  with  him.  Krishna,  being 
amiability  in  person,  wished  to  satisfy  all  of  them. 
As  a  god,  he  possessed  the  gift  of  miracles,  and 
of  the  most  astounding  of  miracles,  the  multipli- 
cation of  himself.  Thanks  to  this  supernatural 
gift,  he  divided  himself  into  as  many  Krishnas  as 
there  were  shepherdesses.  He  danced  with  all;  all 
were  convinced,  at  least,  that  he  had  danced  with 
them.  From  that  moment  forth,  they  believed 
themselves  to  be  privileged  persons.  They  pre- 
served all  their  life  the  precious  memory  of  the 
divine  passage,  like  a  seal  of  divinity,  which  con- 
secrated them  priestesses  of  a  superhuman  ideal. 
The  admirable  point  about  this  miracle  of 
Krishna  was  this  :  nothing  more  simple  than  that 
all  the  shepherdesses  should  have  been  persuaded 
that  they  had  danced  with  Krishna.  That  favor 
would  have  possessed  but  a  mediocre  value  in 
their  eyes  ;  for  woman  does  not  prize  a  gift  which 
she  shares  with  others.  But,  through  a  sentiment 
of  infinite  delicacy,  such  as  a  god  may  feel,  Krishna 
made  each  one  of  the  shepherdesses  think  that  he 
had  danced  with  her  alone.  Love  is  egotistical  ;  it 
is  easily  deceived.  The  beloved  being  guards  his 
secret  for  himself ;  he  wishes  to  believe  that  he 
alone  is  loved.  Each  of  the  shepherdesses  took  to 
contemplating  her  treasure.  Secretum  meum  ttii/ii 
— My  secret  belongs  to  me.  She  believed  that  she 
had  had  no  co-sharer  in  the  ideal,  that  the 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  n? 

great  god,  at  the  moment  of  his  amorous 
manifestation,  had  existed  only  for  her.  Oh  !  how 
pure,  pious,  and  discreet  did  this  thought  render 
them  !  They  were  saints.  Believing  that  they 
alone  had  possessed  the  saint,  they  remained,  all 
their  life,  completely  satisfied,  and  lived  solely  on 
the  contemplation  of  the  god  whom  they  had 
clasped  in  their  arms  to  the  exclusion  of  every 
other. 

Krishna  was  not  the  only  one  to  practice  this 
miracle  of  goodness.  Buddha,  also,  understood 
on  occasion  to  give  himself  to  all,  and  to  make  all 
believe  that  he  had  belonged  to  each  individual 
only. 

When  Buddha  came  into  the  world,  ten  thou- 
sand of  the  handsomest  women  in  India  came  to 
offer  themselves  to  serve  as  his  nurses.  He 
perceived  the  grief  of  those  who  would  be  rejected, 
and  perhaps  the  evil  sentiment  of  jealousy  which 
they  would  experience.  He  multiplied  himself  into 
ten  thousand  little  Buddhas.  Each  woman  held 
him  in  her  arms,  nourished  him  with  her  milk, 
covered  him  with  kisses,  and  most  miraculous  of 
all  !  believed  that  she  alone  had  nursed  him  and 
embraced  him.  Buddhism  was  the  exclusive  work 
of  each  and  everyone  of  them  ;  it  was  their  milk 
which  had  formed  the  divine  body. 

Buddha  repeated  the  same  prodigy  several 
times.  One  day,  as  he  was  traversing  a  burning 
plain,  millions  of  devas  and  genii  flew  to  spread  a 


Il8       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

parasol  over  his  head.  The  saint  multiplied  him- 
self into  as  many  Buddhas  as  there  were  parasols, 
in  order  that  all  might  have  the  satisfaction  of  be- 
lieving that  their  good  will  had  been  accepted. 

It  is  said,  also,  that  when  he  found  himself  on  the 
bank  of  an  impassable  river,  kindly  beings  built  him, 
instantly,  numerous  bridges.  The  Saint  multiplied 
himself  according  to  the  number  of  bridges,  and 
each  one  of  those  who  had  made  them  believed 
that  the  god  had  passed  over  his,  to  the  exclusion 
of  the  others  ;  and  all  were  happy ;  there  were  no 
jealous  persons. 

Those  ancient  gods  understood  better  than  it  is 
understood  nowadays,  how  to  extract  from  human 
nature  all  the  enthusiasm  and  devotion  which  it 
contains.  They  understood  how  to  spoil  people. 
Each  person  could  believe  that  the  world  existed 
only  for  him ;  and  everybody  else  around  him 
believed  the  same  thing.  Has  not  Christianity  also 
its  multiplication  of  the  divine  ? 

Sumil  mi  us,  sumuntmille, 
Quantum  isti,  tantum  ille; 
Nee  sumptus  consumitur* 

These,  my  dear  friend,  are  tales  that  I  fancy  you 
can  relate  to  your  colleagues,  in  some  interval  of 
repose  between  the  sessions  of  the  Council.  I  have 
often  thought,  in  fact,  that  they  have  a  certain  polit- 

*  One  eats,  a  thousand  eat,  it  is  in  proportion  to  the  people ; 
yet  the  food  is  not  consumed — referring  to  the  sacred  elements, 
in  the  mass. 


ERNEST  RENAN.  119 

ical  bearing.  Krishna  dancing  with  all  the  shep- 
herdesses, and  each  shepherdess  imagining  that  he 
thought  only  of  her — is  that  not  a  masterpiece  of 
policy  to  propose  as  a  model  to  those  who  govern 
men?  Men  wish  to  think  that  everything  is  done 
for  them  and  by  them.  Each  one  is  quite  willing  to 
sacrifice  himself  to  the  ideal,  but  on  condition  of  hav- 
ing made  the  ideal  himself.  The  great  cleverness 
of  the  chief  of  the  situation  consists  in  dancing 
with  all,  and  in  making  all  believe  that  he  has 
danced  with  each  one  alone,  does  it  not  ?  And,  in 
crises,  is  it  not  important  to  allow  those  who  pre- 
sent themselves  as  saviors  to  suppose  that  one  has 
effected  one's  retreat  by  passing  over  the  bridge 
which  they  have  erected  ? 

The  miracle  of  the  multiplication  of  one's  self  is 
reserved  for  the  gods.  But,  for  inferior  natures, 
which  are  very  numerous,  and  who  care  very  little 
for  the  mystic  body  of  Krishna,  there  is  a  god  who  is 
infinitely  divisible,  and  who  is  never  consumed.  It 
is  the  budget.  Each  person  wishes  to  have  his 
share  of  its  favors,  with  the  assurance  that  it  will 
never  be  consumed. 

Sunlit  unus,  sumunt  mille, 
Nee  sumptus  consumitur. 

The  master-stroke  would  be,  possibly,  to  have 
all  the  Deputies  members  of  the  commission  on  the 
budget,  and  that  each  one  should  imagine  that  he 

had  made  the  budget  himself Would  it  be 

possible  to  bring  that  about?  .... 


120       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

For  us,  adorers  in  spirit,  always  occupied,  in 
accordance  with  the  Brahmanic  formula,  in  "con- 
centrating our  mind  on  Krishna,"  the  Hindoo 
miracle  retains  all  its  truth.  The  ideal  loses 
nothing  by  division  ;  it  is  contained  entire  in  each 
of  its  parts.  We  live  on  particles  of  Krishna, 
which  we  assimilate  according  to  our  genius.  The 
ideal,  for  all  people,  is  separated  into  as  many 
morsels  as  there  are  tastes,  modified  according  to 
the  character  of  each.  Each  creates  his  own 
divine  dancer.  There  is,  in  fact,  a  refinement 
which  I  would  introduce  into  the  legend  of 
Krishna,  if  I  should  ever  attempt  to  make  of  it  a 
drama,  or,  to  express  it  more  accurately,  a  philo- 
sophical ballet.  At  the  same  time  that  all  the 
shepherdesses  believe  that  they  have  danced  with 
Krishna,  it  would  turn  out  that,  in  reality,  they 
have  danced  with  different  Krishnas.  Each  one 
would  have  made  her  Krishna  after  her  own 
fashion,  and  when  they  came  to  describe  their 
celestial  lover  to  each  other,  it  would  appear  that 
their  dreams  bore  no  resemblance  whatever  to  each 
other,  and  nevertheless  it  would  always  be  Krishna. 

This  is  the  problem  which  must  be  solved  on 
New  Year's  Day,  at  least  :  to  provide  everyone 
with  a  dream,  in  which  each  one  shall  find  his 
Krishna  ;  to  fabricate  for  all  a  little  god,  which 
each  one  shall  caress  in  spirit.  For  one,  this  will 
be  the  most  perfect  of  republics  ;  for  another,  the 
most  perfect  of  monarchies.  Assuredly,  the  policy 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  121 

some  day  will  be  to  give  to  every  man  the  prince 
whom  he  loves,  the  woman  of  whom  he  dreams, 
the  faith  which  he  desires.  Do  not  you  think, 
nevertheless,  that  it  would  be  good  if  this  New 
Year's  policy  could  be  encroached  on  a  little  the 
rest  of  the  twelve  months  ? 

In  a  year,  if  I  live,  if  you  are  Minister,  and  if  the 
world  lasts,  I  will  resume  this  mediation  with  you. 
The  good  side  of  our  philosophy  is  that  it  pre- 
pares one  well  for  eternity.  Those  who  are 
acquainted  with  you  know  how  little  you  care  for 
everything  which  does  not  concern  your  country 
and  the  truth.  For  my  own  part,  I  gladly  accept 
the  premonitions  of  a  speedy  end,  provided  that  it 
be  fine.  The  most  important  work  of  each  one  of 
us  is  his  death  ;  we  execute  this  masterpiece,  in 
the  midst  of  gehennas,  and  with  the  quarter  of  our 
means.  If  I  die  within  the  year,  I  beg  persons  of 
good  taste,  who  are  still  numerous,  not  to  believe 
many  of  the  things  that  will  be  said  about  me.  I 
have  not  been  perfect ;  but  my  life  has  always  had 
an  objective,  disinterested  aim.  I  ha,ve  been  a 
very  virtuous  man  ;  to  that  fact  I  owe  the  charm 
of  my  old  age,  and  a  certain  freshness  of  imagina- 
tion, which  makes  me  take  more  and  more  pleasure 
in  godly  creatures. 

How  ungrateful  I  should  be,  did  I  complain  of 
my  lot !  For  four-and-sixty  years,  I  shall  have 
contemplated  the  most  wonderful  of  spectacles,  the 
universe.  It  is  less  long  than  the  ancient  paradise, 


122        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

but  much  more  amusing.  I  have  contemplated 
this  spectacle  from  a  tolerably  good  seat,  with 
elbow-rests  and  footstools  to  my  taste.  I  have 
seen  the  world  at  one  of  the  most  interesting 
moments  of  its  development.  The  point  at  which 
I  have  been  placed,  to  enjoy  this  astonishing  dis- 
play of  fireworks,  has  been  excellent. 

The  planet  Earth  is  unrivaled  as  a  spot  from 
which  to  enjoy  the  universe.  It  is  small  ;  but  it 
produces  alert  and  subtle  minds.  It  has  had 
Galileo,  Newton,  Laplace.  The  atmosphere  which 
surrounds  it  is  perfectly  clear.  We  are  sure  that, 
between  us  and  the  most  distant  stars,  there  is  no 
opaque  body,  no  screen.  Truly,  no  one  in  the 
universe  is  to  be  pitied,  save  those  people  who 
inhabit  planets  where  the  atmosphere  is  simply 
translucid,  which  does  not  deprive  them  of  light, 
but  which  does  deprive  them  of  the  view  of  in- 
finity. Ah  !  those  poor  inhabitants  of  Venus  !  .  .  . 
I  understand  well  how  they  must  rebel !  How 
that  milky  atmosphere  in  which  they  live  must 
limit  their  horizon  !  How  thoroughly  they  must 
believe  that  the  world  was  made  for  them  !  What 
narrow-minded  people  they  must  be  !  But  the 
inhabitants  of  the  Earth  !  The  infinite  is  open  to 
them.  How  can  one  grow  weary  with  that  ?  And 
then,  what  games  !  what  festivals  !  I  am  persuaded 
that  the  beings  whom  the  breath  of  God  has  caused 
to  blossom  out  on  the  planet  Earth,  are  the  privi- 
leged of  the  universe. 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  123 

For  my  own  part,  I  am  content.  I  have  believed, 
in  my  day,  that  1  had  danced  with  Krishna— an 
illusion  perhaps! — I  have  built  bridges  for  gods 
in  distress  ;  I  have  held  the  parasol  over  the  head 
of  Buddha.  Long  life  to  the  Eternal  !  the  light 
is  good.  Farewell,  my  friend,  until  next  year,  if  it 
pleases  God. 


A  WORD    ON    THE    EXPOSITION.       LETTER    TO 
M.    JULES    LEMAITRE. 

PARIS,  May  9,  1889. 

Dear  Friend :  Certainly  I  should  have  been 
glad  to  respond  to  the  invitation  contained  in  your 
note  of  day  before  yesterday  morning.  But  what 
Christ  said  is  true  of  me  :  Spiritus  quidem  promptus 
est;  caro  vero  infirma — The  spirit,  indeed,  is  willing, 
but  the  flesh  is  weak.  A  recurrence  of  my  habitual 
ailments  has  prevented  me,  so  far,  from  seeing  that 
dear  Exposition,  which  I  bless,  since  it  seems  to 
introduce  into  human  affairs  a  little  joy,  oblivion, 
cordiality,  and  sympathy.  I  viewed  the  prepara- 
tions for  it,  a  few  weeks  ago,  from  the  heights  of 
the  Trocadero  ;  it  produced  upon  me  the  effect  of 
the  Villa  Adriana,  of  one  of  those  festivals  of  the 
time  of  Adrian,  which  were  brilliant,  a  trifle  com- 
posite, eclectic  to  excess,  but  which  we  love  like 
the  last  smiles  of  a  dying  world.  Even  supposing 
that  the  Fxposition  of  1889  should  be  the  last 


124        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

occasion  which  men  will  have  to  assemble  for  the 
purpose  of  giving  themselves  up  to  gayety  and  to 
amuse  themselves  with  follies,  this  melancholy 
thought  is  not  of  a  nature  to  render  it  less  poetical 
and  less  suggestive  to  us. 

And  then,  after  all,  who  knows  the  future  ?  You 
suppose  me  to  be  more  pessimistic  than  I  am. 
Yes,  I  am  alarmed  at  beholding  so  grandiose  a 
tradition  as  that  of  French  royalty  handed  over  to 
a  sovereign  so  narrow-minded,  so  giddy,  so  acces- 
sible to  calumny,  so  easily  surprised,  as  the  people 
represented  by  universal  suffrage.  I  do  not  deny 
that  the  present  moment  has  its  advantages  and 
its  sweetness.  Liberty  is  greater  than  it  ever  has 
been  before  in  our  country,  perhaps  than  in  any 
country  in  the  world.  The  exaggerated  criticisms 
which  are  addressed  to  the  present  form  of  govern- 
ment proceed  from  minds  who  do  not  know  the 
past,  and  who  have  no  idea  of  what  that  future, 
which  they  conjure,  would  bring.  Provided  only 
that  it  may  last !  .  .  .  .  That  is  the  only  reserve 
that  we  make  in  our  contentment.  If  it  were  a 
question  merely  of  our  own  fragile  persons,  we 
should  have  the  right  to  be  improvident,  adven- 
turous, daring.  But  it  is  a  question  of  France,  of 
her  existence,  of  her  destiny.  On  the  back  of  that 
page  of  the  Temps,  where  I  saw  these  consoling 
descriptions  of  the  festivals,  that  fine  speech  of 
M.  Carnot,  I  read,  under  the  heading  "Saint- 
Ouen"  : 


ERNEST  REN  AX.  125 

Monsieur  General  Boulanger 1043  Elected. 

Naquet,  Boulangist 981  Elected. 

"          Laguerre,  Boulangist 981  Elected. 

"         Deroulede,  Boulangist 979  Elected. 

Several  persons  to  whom  I  have  remarked  upon 
it  have  told  me  that  Saint-Ouen  is  not  a  very  en- 
lightened locality.  That  is  possible  ;  but  I  fear 
that  there  are,  in  France,  a  multitude  of  cantons 
which,  in  politics  at  least,  are  not  much  more  en- 
lightened than  Saint-Ouen. 

That  is  why  I  cannot  help,  at  times,  perceiving 
between  the  rays  of  this  beautiful  setting  sun  a 
gloomy  cloud,  fringed  with  gold,  whence  there 
might  easily  emerge  a  Roc  which  would  carry  off 
everything.  Let  us  continue  to  place  our  hope  in 
reason,  and  believe  in  my  sincere  friendship. 


THE    EIGHTEENTH  CENTENARY    OF    POMPEII. 

LETTER     TO     THE     DIRECTOR     OF    THE 
"JOURNAL  DES  DEBATS." 

SORRENTO,  September  26,  1879. 
Sir  and  Dear  Director  :  You  desire  me  to  relate, 
in  a  few  words,  what  the  Commission  of  Italian  An- 
tiquities has  done  to  commemorate  the  hundredth 
anniversary  of  an  event  lugubrious  in  itself,  but 
which  has  had,  for  science,  consequences  without 
an  equal.  The  Italian  commission  had  too  much 


126        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

taste  to  celebrate  as  a  festival  a  catastrophe  which 
cost  the  lives  of  hundreds  of  persons  as  intelligent, 
as  civilized  as  ourselves  ;  what  it  wished  was  a  sci- 
entific assembly,  a  memorial  addressed  to  the  past, 
a  pilgrimage  for  those  who  love  antiquity.  It  has 
been  perfectly  successful  ;  the  solemnity  to  which 
we  were  invited  was  cold  and  wearisome  for  the 
loungers  who  came  to  seek  a  diversion  on  the  ashes 
of  the  dead  ;  in  the  eyes  of  cultivated  people,  it 
was  managed  with  infinite  good  sense  and  tact. 

In  the  autumn  of  the  year  79  occurred  one  of  the 
most  extraordinary  events  in  the  history  of  the 
globe.  An  old  volcano,  entirely  extinct,  covered 
with  thickets  and  wild  vines,  and  whose  crater  had 
served  as  a  refuge  for  the  desperate  soldiers  of 
Spartacus,  burst  forth  with  an  energy  of  which  we 
possess  no  example  in  historic  times,  buried  four 
or  five  cities  at  its  feet,  and  created  that  powerful 
center  of  eruptive  activity  which  lasts  even  in  our 
day,  and  seems  to  have  come  and  planted  itself 
in  the  suburbs  of  a  great  city  in  order  to  allow 
itself  to  be  studied  at  ease.  Chance  has  decreed 
that  we  should  owe  the  description  of  the  phenom- 
enon to  the  pen  of  the  best  writer  of  that  epoch  : 

"  It  was  on  the  ninth  of  the  calends  of  September 
[?],  toward  the  seventh  hour  ;  my  uncle  com- 
manded the  fleet  at  Misenum,  when  my  grand- 
mother came  and  announced  to  me  that  a  cloud  of 
unwonted  size  and  form  was  rising  on  the  horizon. 
At  the  first  moment,  it  was  impossible  for  us  to  tell 


ERNEST  J?EJVAA\  127 

from  what  mountain  it  proceeded  ;  later  on,  we 
learned  that  it  was  from  Vesuvius.  In  order  to 
describe  the  form  and  appearance  of  the  cloud,  I 
see  but  one  comparison  ;  it  is  that  of  a  gigantic 
pine  tree  spreading  out  into  branches  at  the  ex- 
tremity of  an  inordinately  long  trunk.  In  fact, 
carried  by  the  force  of  the  original  projection,  the 
uplifted  matter  mounted  perpendicularly  at  first  ; 
then,  as  the  current  which  sustained  it  vanished, 
little  by  little,  weight  resumed  its  rights,  and  the 
whole  flattened  out  into  a  mass  that  was  sometimes 
whitish,  sometimes  somber  and  spotted  with  black. 
The  horrible  cyclone,  rent  by  the  sinuous  furrows 
and  the  vibrating  flashes  of  the  lightning,  as  though 
it  bore  in  its  flames  an  igneous  life,  opened  and 
presented  to  view  in  its  interior  all  the  fantastic 
play  of  a  tempest  of  fire  ;  there  were  lightnings, 
but  lightnings  greater  than  had  ever  been  beheld 
before.  Soon  the  cloud  descended,  covered  the 
sea,  enveloped  Capri,  hid  it  completely,  and  con- 
cealed from  sight  the  jutting  point  of  Misenum. 
Next  the  ashes  came,  rare  at  first,  then  like  a  tor- 
rent invading  the  earth.  The  obscurity  was  com- 
parable, I  will  not  say  to  that  of  the  darkest  night, 
but  to  which  one  feels  in  a.  closed  place,  when  the 
light  is  suddenly  extinguished.  On  all  sides  were 
heard  roars,  the  cries  of  people  calling  to  each 
other,  and  seeking  to  recognize  each  other  by  their 
voices.  Some,  through  fear  of  death,  invoked 
death  ;  many  raised  their  hands  to  the  gods  ; 


128       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

others  said  that  there  were  no  longer  any  gods, 
and  saw  in  what  was  happening  the  realization  of 
the  prophecies  which  predict  for  the  earth  an  eter- 
nal night  as  its  latter  end.  '  Misenum  has  crum- 
bled away,'  said  some  ;  '  it  is  on  fire,'  said  others. 
All  this  was  false,  but  people  believed  it.  A  faint 
gleam  appearing,  they  did  not  take  it  as  a  sign 
that  the  light  was  returning,  but  as  an  indication 
of  the  arrival  of  fire.  The  fire  did  not  approach 
us,  in  reality  ;  the  darkness  descended  once  more ; 
the  ashes  fell  again,  dense  and  heavy.  We  were 
obliged  to  rise  every  moment  and  shake  it  off ; 
otherwise,  we  should  speedily  have  been  covered 
and  crushed  by  its  weight.  Little  by  little  the 
darkness  lightened  ;  the  sun  appeared,  pale  as  on 
a  day  of  eclipse.  Troubled  clouds  floated  before 
our  eyes.  The  world  seemed  to  have  changed  its 
face ;  the  land  was  clothed  in  a  thick  layer  of 
ashes,  which  covered  everything,  like  snow." 

Everyone  knows  how  the  antique  land,  thus 
buried,  has  been  for  the  last  hundred  and  fifty 
years  a  mine  of  priceless  discoveries  for  archae- 
ology. This  matter  of  cities  placed  in  reserve, 
after  a  manner,  by  a  natural  occurrence,  for  the 
use  of  future  archaeologists,  seems  to  me  almost 
unique  in  the  .world,  and  I  know  of  nothing,  except 
Velliea,  near  Placentia,  interred  by  the  fall  of  a 
mountain,  which  can  be  compared  to  the  cities  at 
the  foot  of  Vesuvius.  The  frightful  catastrophe, 
which  took  place  eighteen  hundred  years  ago,  has, 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  129 

consequently,  been  a  bit  of  unparalleled  good  for- 
tune for  the  study  of  antiquity,  especially  since  a 
really  methodical  management  has  been  applied  to 
the  excavations.  The  first  researches  were  more 
prejudicial  than  useful  to  the  city  itself,  being  un- 
dertaken solely  with  a  view  to  enriching  museums. 
They  destroyed  in  order  to  find  ;  they  covered  up 
the  fragments  which  were  not  transportable  ;  they 
dug  here  and  there,  without  continuity,  according  as 
they  fancied  they  caught  a  glimpse  of  indications 
of  good  finds.  The  glory  of  having  introduced 
method  belongs  to  M.  Fiorelli,  who  was  the  first  to 
think  that  the  most  curious  thing  resulting  from 
the  excavations  at  Pompeii  was  Pompeii  itself.  In 
the  place  of  holes  and  subterranean  galleries  dug 
at  haphazard,  isolated  parcels  were  cleared  ;  the 
most  ingenious  precautions  were  employed  to  assure 
the  preservation  of  monuments  upon  their  original 
site.  The  result  of  these  fine  researches  was  an 
ancient  city,  under  the  open  sky,  where  one  can 
walk,  where  one  finds  fresh,  as  if  of  yesterday,  the 
impression  of  the  voluptuous  existence  led  by  the 
Romans  who  loved  the  "  Greek  life,"  during  the 
first  century  of  our  era. 

Sorrento  is  a  spot  of  such  perfect  repose  that  I 
hesitated,  at  first,  to  quit  it,  to  pass  a  hot  day,  at 
the  close  of  summer,  under  the  blazing  sun,  in  the 
middle  of  a  crowd  and  dust.  From  my  win- 
dows, I  have  before  my  eyes  the  great  actor  in  the 
drama  of  79,  Vesuvius,  which  does  not  seem  to 


13°       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

have  exhaled  his  wrath  seriously  since  then  ;  I  see 
Pompeii  and  the  green  stretches  of  the  Sarno  ;  I 
see  the  little  Isle  of  Hercules  in  front  of  the 
ancient  port  of  Pompeii,  an  incontrovertible  sign 
of  Phoenician  counting-houses  in  these  parts. 
Hence  I  thought  of  celebrating,  from  my  chamber, 
by  reading  Pliny's  two  letters,  the  strange  event 
of  the  year  79  ;  then  ideas  of  a  more  active 
philosophy  carried  the  day  ;  my  young  friend, 
Maurice  Paleologus,  undertook  all  the  arrange- 
ments, and  we  set  out,  at  seven  o'clock  in  the 
morning,  to  join  the  reunion  of  enlightened  men 
who  had  assembled  on  that  day  upon  the  ruins  of 
the  demolished  city. 

I  had  come  to  Sorrento  by  sea,  a  few  days 
before,  and  I  had  not  yet  enjoyed  the  incompara- 
ble sight  presented  by  the  road  which  unites  that 
town  to  Castellamare.  I  have  been  accustomed  to 
say,  hitherto,  that,  in  the  zone  of  our  planet — very 
limited,  alas ! — which  I  have  traversed,  the  route 
from  Vietri  to  Amalfi  is  the  most  beautiful  thing  I 
know.  Well  !  now  I  hesitate.  The  sight  of  the 
point  of  Meta,  that  of  Vico,  are  equal  to  the  most 
admirable  thing  that  can  be  imagined  in  the  shape 
of  smiling,  amiable  nature,  completed,  finished  by 
man,  in  proportion  with  himself.  The  well  dis- 
tributed waters  of  the  Sarno  have  given  to  the 
plain  which  separates  the  pile  of  Sorrento  from 
Vesuvius  a  fertility  which  justifies  what  the 
ancients  have  told  us  of  the  beautiful  vegetation  in 


ERNEST  RE  NAN.  131 

the  neighborhood  of  Pompeii.  Many  learned  men 
have  believed  that  this  plain  is  a  conquest  which 
the  eruption  of  79,  by  a  sort  of  compensation, 
presented  to  the  ancient  shore.  But  M.  Ruggiero 
has  peremptorily  refuted  this  hypothesis;  he  has 
demonstrated  that  the  aggrandizements  of  the  con- 
tinent  have  been  very  inconsiderable,  in  this  di- 
rection, and  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  eruption 
of  79. 

We  arrived  about  ten  o'clock,  when  the  authori- 
ties were  taking  their  seats.  There  I  found  Min- 
ervini,  Fiorelli,  those  brilliant  continuers  of  the 
great  archaeological  school  of  Naples,  and  with 
them,  Bernabei,  Salinas,  de  Petra,  those  active 
disciples,  who  are  reaping  their  inheritance  so  well. 
The  programme  of  the  celebration  was  composed 
of  three  parts  :  first,  a  speech  by  M.  Ruggiero, 
who  has  so  worthily  replaced  M.  Fiorelli  in  the 
management  of  the  excavations  ;  next,  a  visit  to 
the  monuments  ;  then  an  excavation  executed 
before  the  eyes  of  the  public  on  ground  prepared 
for  it.  We  directed  our  steps  to  the  basilica  where 
M.  Ruggiero  was  to  deliver  his  speech,  and  took 
seats  in  the  inclosure.  It  was  decorated  with 
extreme  simplicity  ;  not  a  flag,  no  band  of  music, 
not  even  a  bust  of  Pliny  !  I  confess  that  I  rather 
regretted  the  absence  of  this  last.  The  martyrs  of 
science  should  be  honored. 

M.  Ruggiero  had  begun  the  history  of  the 
strange  phenomenon,  the  centenary  of  which  had 


1 3  2        RECOLLECTIONS  A ND  LE  7  TERS  OF 

brought  us  together,  without  affected  phrases, 
without  declamation,  when  an  incident  which  was 
not  set  down  on  the  programme  caused  a  momen- 
tary smile.  The  gates  of  Pompeii  had  been  so 
liberally  thrown  open  that  day,  that  no  one  could* 
answer  for  the  good  sense  of  all  the  persons  pres- 
ent. A  crazy  man  found  means  to  climb  a  column 
and  there  begin  a  declamation,  which  overwhelmed 
M.  Ruggiero's  voice  for  a  moment.  Universal 
suffrage  did  not  exhibit  itself  in  an  entirely  favora- 
ble light  on  this  occasion  ;  the  madman's  speech 
was  received  with  tolerably  vigorous  applause.  I 
cannot  say  whether  the  applause  was  well  bestowed. 
His  discourse  has  not  been  printed,  like  that  of 
M.  Ruggiero.  Here  is  a  trace  of  inequality,  which 
I  point  out  to  high-flown  levelers  as  abusive.  Ine- 
quality in  the  eye  of  the  press  still  exists,  perhaps 
it  will  be  reduced  to  order  one  of  these  days  ;  in 
any  case,  privilege  carried  the  day  on  this  occa- 
sion ;  for,  at  the  end  of  a  few  minutes  M.  Rug- 
giero had  the  field  entirely  to  himself. 

While  order  was  being  gradually  restored,  and 
we  were  exchanging  various  comments  among  our- 
selves as  to  the  political  and  social  bearing  of  this 
incident,  I  heard  a  genuine  siren's  voice  behind 
me  ;  it  was  that  of  M.  Palizzi,  director  of  the  school 
of  Fine  Arts  at  Naples,  a  charming  man  as  well 
as  an  excellent  artist,  with  whom  I  had  made 
most  agreeable  excursions  in  the  environs  of 
Ischia.  With  him  I  found  five  or  six  friends  who 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  133 

had  been  my  companions  on  those  excursions,  and 
whose  conversations  had  still  further  embellished 
those  beautiful  places,  were  that  possible.  "  We 
cannot  hear  very  well,"  said  Palizzi,  "and  then  the 
madman  will  begin  again.  Those  people  are 
never  discouraged.  Come  with  us."  At  the  same 
time,  he  shows  me  a  key,  which  I  took,  at  first,  for 
an  ancient  object  recently  discovered. 

"  This  key  is  modern,"  he  said  to  me  ;  "  but  it 
will  open  the  only  house  in  Pompeii  which  has  a 
lock,  and  that  is  no  small  advantage  among  these 
8000  persons.  It  is  an  antique  house,  which  has 
been  supplied  with  a  roof  and  a  door  for  the  artist 
of  merit  who  is  present  at  the  excavations  and 
takes  a  rapid  sketch  of  all  the  paintings  which  are 
discovered,  with  the  true  colors  of  the  first  mo- 
ments." "  An  excellent  precaution,"  I  said  to 
him.  "  How  many  Egyptian  discoveries  pass  from 
existence  the  day  after  their  being  brought  to 
light,  and  perish  forever  !  "  "  Yes,  come,"  he 
said.  "  We  will  first  go  and  pay  our  respects  to 
the  poor  people  who  died  eighteen  hundred  years 
ago  ;  then  we  will  go  to  rest  and  breakfast  in  the 
house  of  the  painter.  Come  ;  Ruggiero's  speech 
is  printed  ;  you  shall  read  it  this  evening  with  a 
tranquil  brain,  and  the  madman  will  no  longer  be 
there." 

I  yielded  to  this  very  amiable  invitation  ;  the 
truth  is  that  M.  Palizzi  furnished  me  with  one  of 
the  most  striking  sights  that  I  have  ever  beheld. 


134       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

The  whole  crowd  was  massed  around  the  basilica, 
and  produced  by  its  vivid  colors,  among  those  walls 
of  ashen  hues,  a  strange  contrast.  The  remainder 
of  the  city  was  deserted  and  presented  that  aspect 
of  melancholy  which  is  so  peculiar  to  Pompeii  on 
ordinary  occasions.  We  visited  in  particular  that 
street  of  Tombs,  one  of  the  most  poetical  places  in 
the  world  ;  we  sat  down  on  those  hospitable  seats 
which  the  dead  offers  to  the  living  as  though  to 
counsel  him  to  repose — oh!  what  good  counsel 
the  dead  give  !  We  were  on  our  way  to  salute 
the  spot,  at  the  gate  of  the  city,  where  was  found 
the  soldier,  victim  to  his  duty,  when  one  of  our 
companions  stopped  us  abruptly:  "Everything  is 
changed,"  he  said  ;  "  that  little  nook  is  no  longer, 
as  has  been  thought,  a  sentry-box  ;  people  have 
been  greatly  in  the  wrong  in  insisting  upon  seeing, 
in  the  body  which  was  found  there,  the  remains  of 
a  sentinel  who  perished  at  his  post,  accepting  the 
evident  danger  of  being  suffocated  rather  than  flee. 
.This  man  did  not  deserve  the  honors  which  have 
been  paid  to  him  ;  perhaps  he  was  a  thief."  This 
made  us  thoughtful.  What !  Even  after  death,  a 
hero  of  duty  can  be  confounded  with  a  thief,  ac- 
cording to  the  caprices  of  archaeology !  the  body 
of  a  thief  can  usurp,  for  years,  in  consequence  of 
the  error  of  antiquarians,  the  honors  due  to  heroes  ! 
How  very  necessary  is  a  Last  Judgment  to  revise 
all  this  !  But  even  in  that,  what  errors  are  pos- 
sible !  What  precautions  will  be  required  !  This 


ERNEST  RE  NAN.  135 

reminds  me  of  the  unhappy  wretch  who  was  taken 
for  Biliioray,  on  the  25th  of  May,  1871,  and  shot 
'near  the  Invalides  ;  then  the  real  Biliioray  was 
merely  condemned  to  deportation.  Ah  !  the  jus- 
tice  of  this  world  !  We  beheld  once  more  that 
strange  museum,  formed  of  the  plaster  casts  of  the 
human  bodies  found  in  the  ashes  !  The  flesh  hav- 
ing been  consumed,  molds  and  good  channels 
were  left,  into  which  plaster  could  be  poured,  so 
that  the  rigorously  exact  cast  of  the  unfortunate 
Pompeians,  as  they  expired,  was  obtained.  Noth- 
ing could  be  more  striking.  The  young  girl  who 
presses  her  bosom  against  the  earth,  as  though  to 
embrace  it,  with  her  arms  folded,  presents  the  pur- 
est forms  and  the  most  touching  attitude.  A  dog, 
a  fine  greyhound,  writhes,  with  head  held  between 
his  legs  ;  he  was  fastened  at  the  door  of  a  house ; 
as  the  inundation  of  volcanic  cinders  rose,  he  rose 
also,  but  his  cord  soon  stopped  him.  M.  Ruggiero 
has  brought  to  the  study  of  these  difficult  Pom- 
peian  questions,  admirable  patience  and  method. 
He  has  resolutely  discarded  the  hypothesis  of 
water,  and  the  hypothesis  of  fire.  Undeniable 
facts  establish  that  Pompeii  was  not  drowned  in  a 
torrent  of  liquid  mud,  as  has  been  asserted.  The 
invading  matter  did  not  penetrate  inclosed  spaces. 
The  oven,  in  which  was  found  bread  in  the  process 
of  baking,  was  perfectly  clean  and  empty  inside, 
with  its  eighty-one  little  loaves  ;  and  it  was  only 
partially  closed.  A  well,  the  opening  to  which  was 


136       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

preserved  from  the  invasion  of  the  volcanic  cinders, 
was  not  filled  up;  the  water  gushes  up  there, 
at  the  present  day,  at  a  depth  of  twenty-five* 
meters. 

The  system  of  conflagration  is  not  admissible 
either — Pompeii  did  not  perish  by  fire.  The  lead  is 
not  melted,  the  marbles  are  not  calcined,  bits  of 
cloth  and  of  wood  adhere  to  metal,  and  are  not 
carbonized  ;  the  mural  paintings  are  exempt  from 
the  action  of  fire  and  of  smoke.  Some  facts,  which 
seem  to  lead  to  a  contrary  deduction,  are  ex- 
plained, either  by  the  fall  of  incandescent  scoriae, 
or  by  lightning,  the  action  of  which  is  pro- 
duced with  extraordinary  violence  around  orifices 
of  eruption.  In  reality,  Pompeii  was  covered,  in  a 
few  hours,  with  a  layer  of  volcanic  cinders  and 
ashes  equivalent,  with  the  cumulative  action  of  the 
rain,  to  seven  or  eight  meters.  Almost  all  the  in- 
habitants, to  the  number  of  12,000,  were  able  to 
make  their  escape  ;  about  500  lingered  and  per- 
ished. The  rain  of  volcanic  cinders  preceded  that 
of  ashes ;  they  could  preserve  themselves  from  the 
former,  by  barricading  themselves  in  cellars  and 
enclosed  places.  This  explains  the  imprudence  of 
the  500  unfortunates.  They  awaited  the  end  of 
the  shower  of  fine  stones ;  they  did  not  count  on 
the  shower  of  ashes  which  suffocated  them.  Events 
took  place  very  nearly  as  in  1872  ;  only,  on  this 
last  occasion,  the  shower  of  ashes  was  much  more 
feeble,  and  people  were  merely  put  to  the  incon- 


ERNEST  KENAN.  137 

venience    of    using    umbrellas    in    the    streets    of 
Naples. 

Meanwhile,  M.  Palizzi  led  us  gradually  to  the 
agreeable  nook  which  he  had  prepared  for  us.  The 
heat  was  very  powerful,  the  shadow  of  the  old 
walls  was  very  narrow  ;  we  finally  arrived  at  the 
threshold  of  our  desires.  M.  Palizzi  preceded  us, 
key  in  hand.  Oh,  surprise  !  the  little  house  was 
occupied  .  .  .  occupied  by  an  excellent  company, 
moreover — ladies,  who  were  engaged  in  partaking 
of  a  frugal  repast.  We  looked  at  Palizzi  ;  Palizzi 
looked  at  us.  What  was  the  value  of  that  key  on 
which  we  had  founded  our  hopes?  We  applied  to 
the  corporal  who  stood  near  by ;  we  explained  the 
case  to  him,  he  reflected  at  length  :  "  There  must 
be  two  keys,"  said  he.  This  hypothesis  was  no 
more  probable  than  those  which  are  sometimes 
hazarded  on  the  subject  of  Pompeian  problems  ; 
we  did  not  contradict  it,  but  we  remained  con- 
vinced that  the  modern  door,  which  did  not  adapt 
itself  well  to  the  ancient  framework,  had  been 
forced.  Naturally,  we  pretended  to  be  happy  at 
having  been  anticipated,  and,  after  taking  precau- 
tions that  the  incident  should  not  be  repeated,  we 
set  off  to  pay  another  visit  to  the  houses  called 
the  house  of  Diomed,  the  house  of  Sallust,  and 
those  of  the  Vestals  and  the  Dancing  Girls.  Then 
we  found  well-earned  repose  in  the  tiny  house 
which  our  discreet  predecessors  had  finally  va- 
cated. M.  Palizzi  explained  to  me  the  results  of 


I 38       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

the  long  sojourn  which  he  had  made  on  the  ruins 
of  Pompeii,  and,  in  particular,  his  observations  on 
the  streets  and  ways.  He  pointed  out  to  me  the 
extremely  unequal  pavements  of  the  streets,  and 
how  this  state  corresponded  exactly  with  the  limits 
of  the  houses,  so  that  the  conclusion  which  must 
be  drawn  from  it  was  that  the  pavements  fell 
among  the  obligations  of  the  proprietors  abutting 
on  them. 

I  was  examining  attentively  the  interesting  paint- 
ings, the  experiments  in  restoring  ancient  houses, 
which  covered  the  walls,  when  the  unforeseen  made 
its  entry  once  more,  in  the  person  of  a  porter,  carry- 
ing a  bale  corded  with  the  utmost  care  and  cleverly 
concealing  its  contents.  The  idea  had  been,  no 
doubt,  to  turn  aside  the  eyes  of  desire  of  such 
people  as  should  behold  the  mysterious  basket  on 
its  passage,  and  it  had  been  given  the  appearance 
which  an  archaeological  package  might  assume. 

It  was  the  breakfast  prepared  by  our  friends — an 
exquisite  breakfast,  if  ever  there  was  one — and 
which  reminded  me  of  the  collation  which  we  had 
found  all  ready,  when  we  were  making  the  tour  of 
Ischia,  in  the  desert  bay  of  Monte-Santangelo. 
At  Pompeii  it  was  the  best  wines  of  France  that 
these  gentlemen  gave  us  to  drink  ;  we  preferred 
to  them  that  asprino,  which  the  common  people 
buy  for  two  sous,  but  which  is  not  to  be  found  in 
the  hotels  which  respect  themselves,  and  a  wine  of 
the  Abruzzi  prepared  in  French  fashion,  which 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  139 

seemed  to  me  to  have  a  fine  future  before  it.  My 
young  friend  Maurice  was  enchanted  ;  he  was  un- 
dergoing his  apprenticeship  in  Italian  cordiality, 
and  had  not  reached  his  twentieth  experience,  as 
I  had. 

I  made  the  remark  that  it  was,  perhaps,  impious 
to  breakfast  so  well  in  the  house  of  the  dead,  but 
some  one  replied  : 

"  That  happened  a  long  time  ago  ;  and,  after 
all,  are  they  greatly  to  be  pitied  ?  They  would  be 
dead,  all  the  same,  and  see  how  people  talk  of 
them,  and  occupy  their  minds  with  them.  Do  not 
you  think  that  the  Egyptians  who  were  sacrificed 
in  the  construction  of  the  Pyramids  live  to-day  far 
more  than  those  who  paddled  out  the  normal  sum 
of  their  years  in  the  mud  of  the  Nile  ?  The  insect 
pinned  to  a  card  in  the  museum,  and  which,  by  its 
beautiful  coloring,  evokes  a  cry  of  admiration 
from  a  pretty  mouth,  the  animal  which  serves  for 
the  demonstrations  of  science,  are  privileged  above 
their  fellows,  who  remain  obscure." 

Palizzi  did  not  approve  of  this  paradox,  and 
justified  our  litth  feast  in  another  way. 

"  Have  you  not  noticed,"  he  said  to  me,  "  in  the 
street  of  Tombs,  those  semicircular  benches,  ar- 
ranged expressly  in  the  form  of  scholse,  so  that 
the  country-people  might  come  thither  to  rest, 
chat,  and  discuss  ?  It  is  an  amiable  idea  of  the 
dead  man  to  offer  to  his  survivors  an  agreeable 
moment,  and,  above  all,  that  good  counsel,  to 


140       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

relish  the  honest  joys  of  life  without  imagining 
that  they  will  last  forever.  And  do  not  you  think 
that  the  funeral  feast  was  a  pious  act  in  its  own 
way?"  "Certainly,"  I  replied,  "and  among  those 
of  our  ancestors  who  preserved  longest  their  bar- 
barous customs,  this  repast  was  bound  to  extend 
even  to  drunkenness,  to  bloody  battles.  The  same 
thing  still  exists  in  Ireland  ;  in  Brittany,  also, 
people  would  think  that  they  were  lacking  in 
respect  for  the  dead  did  they  return  from  the 
funeral  in  full  possession  of  their  reason." 

I  was  on  the  point  of  continuing  when  a  move- 
ment arose  in  the  street.  It  was  the  result  of  the 
excavations  which  was  being  brought  to  the  central 
office.  "What  !"  said  I.  "  Have  the  excavations 
been  made  in  our  absence  !  Can  you  imagine  our 
remaining  idle,  when  they  were  at  work?"  My 
companions  smiled.  "  What  do  you  suppose  ex- 
cavations made  in  the  presence  of  eight  thousand 
persons  amount  to  ?  There  is  nothing  serious 
about  them  ;  no  one  but  the  prefect  of  Naples  can 
have  taken  much  interest  in  them."  We  followed 
the  three  or  four  flat  boxes,  bearing  the  arms  of 
the  King  of  Italy,  which  contained  the  objects 
found.  Ah  !  good  Heavens  !  What  a  result ! 
There  was  hardly  anything  in  the  boxes  but  the 
bones  of  dead  people.  Well  !  On  thinking  it 
over  I  came  to  the  decision  that  this  was  full  of 
tact.  This  result  proved  the  honesty  and  scientific 
seriousness  of  the  directors  of  the  festival.  It 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  141 

would  have  been  so  easy  to  prepare  some  dis- 
covery in  honor  of  the  public,  who  expected  some- 
thing of  the  sort  !  M.  Ruggiero  had  denied  him- 
self this  innocent  bit  of  trickery  ;  the  pickaxes 
brought  up  only  kitchen  utensils,  broken  pots,  and 
a  very  considerable  number  of  skulls  and  thigh 
bone's.  It  is  evident  that  the  house  investigated 
was  one  of  those  where  the  people  tarried  longest. 
Those  poor  pagans  suggested  to  me  many  reflec- 
tions. One  of  the  fundamental  principles  of  my 
life,  a  principle  to  which  I  cling  obstinately,  al- 
though many  of  my  friends  declare  it  an  enormous 
cheat,  is  to  consider  as  an  honest  man  every  human 
creature  of  whom  the  contrary  has  not  been  dem- 
onstrated to  me.  Consequently,  I  saluted  these 
poor  remains,  and  I  wafted  a  kiss  of  peace  to  the 
honest  people  to  whom  they  had  belonged.  There 
are  persons  who  profess  exactly  the  contrary  doc- 
trine, and  persist,  more  or  less,  in  regarding  every- 
one who  has  not  been  proved  to  them  to  be  an 
honest  man,  as  a  rogue.  Good  Heavens  !  I  think 
that  they  are  as  cflen  deceived  as  I  am,  and  I 
persist  in  believing  that,  if  one  bears  in  mind  the 
innumerable  difficulties  of  the  human  state,  general 
benevolence  is  true  justice.  Among  the  dead, 
whose  bones  lay  there  before  my  eyes,  there  were, 
perhaps,  resigned  slaves,  faithful  servants,  the 
wounded  of  life  who  had  arrived  at  irony,  which  is, 
also,  after  its  fashion,  a  species  of  wisdom.  That 
skull  yonder  is,  perhaps,  that  of  the  bitter  scoffer 


142        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  01-' 

who  drew  a  little  ass  on  the  wall  and  wrote  below 
it :  "  Labora,  bone  asello,  sicut  ego  laboravi,  et 
proderit  tibi,  sicut  mihi  prodest."*  I  have  not  the 
"Corpus  Inscriptionum  Latinarum "  of  Berlin  at 
hand  to  verify  the  text.  M.  Zangmeister  and  my 
dear  colleague  Leon  Renier  must  pardon  me  if  I 
have  made  any  mistake. 

I  saw  with  pleasure  an  inscription  traced  on  a 
column  of  the  forum,  of  which  M.  Fiorelli  sent  a 
stamp  to  the  commission  of  the  "  Corpus  Inscrip- 
tionum Semiticarum  "  a  few  years  ago.  This  stamp 
then  seemed  to  us  absolutely  inexplicable,  and  we 
classed  it,  provisorily,  in  the  category  of  unknown 
inscriptions.  But  the  fine  publication  of  the  in- 
scriptions of  Safa,  near  Damascus,  made  by  Messrs. 
Waddington  and  de  Vogiie,  has  illuminated  the 
Pompeian  text  in  a  striking  manner. 

These  inscriptions,  the  deciphering  of  which  is 
the  work  of  M.  Joseph  Halevy,  are  genuine  Arabic 
inscriptions  of  the  Roman  epoch.  The  graffito  of 
Pompeii  belongs  indubitably  to  this  group.  It  is 
not  in  the  least  surprising  to  find  an  Arab  writing 
his  name  on  a  column  at  Pompeii,  since,  about  the 
same  time,  some  Nabatseans  of  Petra  left  at  Pouz- 
zoles  so  many  marks  of  their  passage,  and  in  par- 
ticular two  fine  inscriptions  in  Nabatsean  characters. 

It  was  at  this  moment  that  I  made  the  acquaint- 
ance with  a  fine  volume  which  was  to  be  distributed 

*  Labor,  good  little  ass,  as  I  have  labored,  and  it  shall 
profit  you  as  it  has  profited  me, 


ERNEST  KENAN.  143 

on  the  morrow,  and  which  will  remain  as  the  record 
of  this  scientific  solemnity.*  It  is  composed  of  a 
series  of  memorials  on  the  problems  raised  by 
buried  cities.  Therein  M.  Ruggiero  and  his  col- 
laborators  set  forth,  with  the  authority  which  be- 
longs to  them  alone,  the  new  views  at  which  they 
have  arrived,  as  to  the  history  of  the  great  phe- 
nomenon of  79.  Here  again  my  philosophy  was 
subjected  to  some  trials,  for  one  of  M.  Ruggiero's 
best  established  results,  is  that  the  eruption, 
according  to  all  probability,  occurred  on  the  23d 
of  November.  Pliny's  text  leaves  room  for  doubt, 
but  a  multitude  of  details  observed  by  M.  Rug- 
giero seem  to  prove  that  the  event  took  place  to- 
wards the  close  of  autumn.  The  vintage  had  been 
finished,  and  the  operations  which  follow  it  must 
have  been  far  advanced  ;  the  amphorae,  in  general, 
are  not  found  in  the  cellars ;  they  are  in  the  do- 
mestic offices,  in  the  kitchens  ;  they  were  at  work  on 
them  ;  they  were  putting  into  them  the  pitch  and 
resin,  the  ordinary  condiment  of  ancient  wine. 
M.  Ruggiero  draws  the  same  deduction  from  the 
fruits  which  are  found,  and  those  which  are  not 
found,  in  Pompeii.  This  ran  somewhat  contrary  to 
my  impressions,  and  I  mentioned  the  matter  to  one 
of  my  friends.  "  All  days  are  alike,"  he  said. 
"  How  many  anniversaries  you  have  disarranged 
or  suppressed  in  your  books  !  Does  that  prevent 

*  Pompei  e  la  Regione  Sotterrata  dal  Vesuvio  nel  anno  Ixxix. 
Naples,  tip.  Gianni,  in-4,  291-245  pages,  avec  planches. 


144       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

people  continuing  to  celebrate  the  festivals  on  the 
same  day  as  usual  ?  Books  and  the  ways  of  the 
world  have  nothing  to  do  with  each  other." 

But  the  day  was  already  declining,  the  railway 
station  at  Pompeii  was  filled  with  people,  the  lo- 
comotives set  out  on  their  return  to  Naples.  We 
cast  a  glance  at  the  king  of  the  festival,  Vesuvius, 
who  had  been  too  much  forgotten.  Vesuvius  is  in 
a  state  of  great  activity  at  the  present  moment ; 
the  immenseness  of  the  crater,  which  vomits  smoke 
at  its  full  capacity,  is  nowhere  to  be  measured 
so  well  as  from  Pompeii.  Seen  through  the  street 
of  Mercury,  the  old  giant  showed  himself  really 
grandiose,  mythological ;  there  he  stood,  proud,  dis- 
dainful, content  with  his  work,  quite  ready  to  be- 
gin it  all  over  again.  The  aspects  of  Vesuvius, 
studied  by  the  hour,  as  one  can  study  them  from 
Sorrento,  are  the  spectacle  which  gives  the  best 
idea  of  the  mythological  conceptions  of  the 
ancients.  The  somewhat  human  attitude  of  the 
gaping  monster,  the  very  diverse  and  always  plas- 
tic aspects  presented  by  the  plume  of  smoke,  ac- 
cording to  the  direction  of  the  wind  and  the  time 
of  day,  give  the  idea  of  a  living  being,  which  has 
rages,  has  passions  of  his  own.  One  can  conceive 
that  the  Greeks  and  the  Italiotes  should  have 
addressed  prayers  and  sacrifices  to  these  capri- 
cious and  irritable  beings,  in  order  to  placate  them; 
one  can  conceive  how  the  Jew  beholds  in  them  an 
agent  of  the  wrathful  Jehovah.  I  meditated,  in 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  145 

particular,  on  the  Apocalypse,  and  on  the  extraor- 
dinary amount  of  space  occupied  in  the  book  of 
Enoch,  and  in  almost  all  the  Sibylline  prophecies, 
by  the  volcanic  accidents  of  the  Bay  of  Naples. 
The  great  phenomena  of  eruptions  and  earthquakes 
of  the  first  and  second  centuries  of  our  era  are  the 
only  ones  of  the  sort  which  have  exercised  an  in- 
fluence on  the  history  of  thoughtful  humanity. 
They  troubled  people's  imaginations,  and,  in  com- 
bination with  the  ideas  of  the  Jews  as  to  an  ap- 
proaching end  of  the  world,  they  produced  that 
idea  of  a  conflagration  in  which  the  ancient  world 
was  to  perish  because  of  its  crimes.  Judicare  secu- 
lum per  ignem — The  world  is  to  be  judged  by  fire. 
Dangerous  words,  which  must  not  be  too  often  re- 
peated !  For  by  dint  of  repeating  a  thing  too 
much,  one  inspires  people,  sometimes,  with  the  idea 
of  realizing  it. 

We  returned  to  Sorrento  at  a  fresh  and  delicious 
time  of  the  day,  finding  the  places  charming  which 
we  had  regarded  quite  otherwise  under  a  different 
illumination  at  eight  o'clock  in  the  morning.  My 
young  companion  performed  nearly  the  whole  of 
the  journey  on  foot,  climbing  up  the  slopes,  escalad- 
ing  the  rocks  to  enjoy  the  admirable  view.  Ar- 
rived at  Sorrento  we  triumphed  over  those  who  had 
been  afraid  of  the  crowd,  the  dust,  and  the  official 
ceremonies.  There  had  not  been  a  trace  of  dust  in 
Pompeii  ;  the  official  part  had  been  reduced,  with 
perfect  tact,  to  its  just  measure,  and,  as  for  the 


146        RECOLLECTIO\S  AND  LETTERS  OF 

crowd,  thanks  to  M.  Palizzi,  we  had  only  had  a 
distant  glimpse  of  that.  Our  triumph  was  complete 
when  we  began  to  extol  the  asprino  ;  everyone 
desired  10  taste  it  ;  we  ordered  some  ;  there  was 
none  in  the  hotel,  and  I  even  think  that  our  order 
brought  down  upon  us  a  certain  amount  of  dis- 
credit 


THE  PORTRAITS  OF  SAINT  PAUL.       LETTER  TO 
M.  MEZIERES  OF  THE    FRENCH  ACADEMY. 

PARIS,  April  8,  1879. 

My  very  dear  Colleague  :  On  reading  this  morn- 
ing in  the  Journal  des  De"bats  the  charming  words 
in  which  you  bade  me  welcome  into  the  company, 
I  was  still  more  touched  than  I  had  been  on  Thurs- 
day, by  so  many  tokens  of  friendship,  and  by  the 
share  which  you  are  so  kind  as  to  take  in  the  re- 
ligion of  my  dearest  memories.  Our  disagreements 
are  a  trifling  matter  ;  for  I  subscribe  heartily  to 
what  you  say  regarding  the  respect  of  the  religious 
conscience  ;  I  fear  as  much  as  you  the  advent  of  a 
brutal  force,  void  of  ideal  beliefs  ;  I  sometimes 
reproach  myself  for  not  liking  to  dwell  in  the 
middle  regions  of  literature,  and  as  for  Marcus 
Aurelius  and  Faustina,  I  abandon  them,  since  you 
wish  it,  although  it  is  impossible  for  me  not  to  be 
struck,  on  beholding  the  most  pious  of  men,  in  his 
most  intimate  converse  with  the  divinity,  associate 


ERNEST  REXAN.  147 

Faustina  with  the  noblest  persons  whom  he  has 
known — with  his  mother  and  sister.  This  proves 
that,  of  the  two  hypotheses  proposed  by  Capitoli- 
nus — Velnesciit,  vel  dissimulavit — Either  he  did  not 
know,  or  he  concealed  it — the  second  is  impossible. 
But  what  matters  it,  since  all  the  world  agrees  that 
Faustina  was  a  charming  woman,  and  since  Marcus 
Aurelius  remains  the  author  of  the  "  Thoughts," 
that  is  to  say,  of  the  most  exquisite  book  that 
heathen  antiquity  has  bequeathed  to  us  ? 

I  do  care  a  little  about  the  ugliness  of  Saint 
Paul,  for  I  would  not  like  to  seem  to  have  carica- 
tured him,  on  any  consideration.  I  certainly 
should  have  done  that,  had  I  been  the  author  of 
the  portrait  which  you  quote  as  coming  from  me. 
On  page  170  of  my  "  Apostles,"  I  have  mentioned 
the  texts  on  which  I  based  my  statements.  No 
doubt,  you  have  thought  them  lacking  in  solidity  ; 
permit  me  to  submit  to  you  a  few  observations 
whence  it  will  appear,  I  think,  that  this  portrait  is 
the  exact  reproduction  of  the  manner  in  which  the 
disciples  and  admirers  of  Paul  conceived  his  image 
about  a  hundred  years  after  his  death. 

The  phrase  which  you  cite  is,  in  fact,  in  great 
part  borrowed  from  the  third  paragraph  of  the  cele- 
brated "  Acts  "  of  Paul  and  of  Thecla.*  Tertul- 
lian,  in  his  treatise  on  "  Baptism,"  chapter  17,  gives 
us  the  most  interesting  details  concerning  the 
origin  of  this  book.  He  relates  that  this  pretty 

*  Tischendorf,  "  Acta  Apostolorum  Apocrypha,"  p.  41. 


148       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

romance  was  the  work  of  a  priest  from  Asia,  a  very 
great  zealot  on  the  subject  of  Paul's  glor)^.  Being 
pressed  with  questions  as  to  the  sources  whence  he 
had  drawn  these  beautiful  narratives,  the  priest, 
driven  to  the  wall,  acknowledged  that  he  had  com- 
posed the  book  himself  "out  of  the  great  love 
which  he  had  for  Paul."  Convictum  atque  confessum 
id  se  amore  Pauli  fecisse.  This  is  charming,  is  it 
not?  What  a  flash  of  light  this  remark  casts  upon 
the  manner  in  which  veracious  history  was  under- 
stood !  To  attribute  to  a  great  and  revered  per- 
sonage noble  adventures,  speeches  which  were 
supposed  to  be  sublime,  far  from  passing  for  a 
culpable  imposture,  was  a  meritorious  act.  They 
gloried  in  it,  and  assumed  that  the  personage  whom 
they  had  taken  for  their  subject  ought  to  feel  him- 
self highly  honored.  But  is  it  in  consequence  of 
this  same  sentiment  that  one  could  be  led  to 
attribute  to  one's  hero  a  small  head,  a  long  nose, 
eyebrows  which  met  in  the  middle  of  his  forehead, 
and  bandy  legs  ?  I  do  not  think  so.  Convictum 
atque  confessum  id  se  amore  Pauli  fecisse.  One  can 
never  believe  that  it  was  out  of  love  for  Paul  that 
the  priest  from  Asia  invented  this  portrait.  I 
incline  rather  to  think  that  the  Asian  priest  ex- 
pressed himself  thus  because  there  existed  a  tra- 
ditional image  of  the  great  apostle  which  he 
contented  himself  with  reproducing.  Assuredly, 
the  "Acts"  of  Paul  and  Thecla  contain  fabulous 
things,  although  quite  recently  our  learned  col- 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  149 

league,  M.  Le  Blant,  who  is  a  great  authority  in 
Christian  antiquities,  has  pointed  out  its  historical 
authority  in  many  respects,  and  its  value  in  the 
matter  of  local  color.*  That  which  appears  certain, 
at  the  least,  is,  that  having  occasion  to  trace  the 
type  of  the  apostle,  the  author  cannot  have  done  it 
contrary  to  the  generally  received  ideas.  One 
cannot  imagine  that  in  writing  a  book  destined,  in 
his  opinion,  to  glorify  Paul,  he  should  have  pre- 
sented the  latter  with  features  almost  ridiculous, 
and  contrary,  at  the  same  time,  to  the  image  of  him 
which  people  held. 

At  what  date  was  this  romance  composed,  this 
romance  so  full  of  grace  and  tenderness,  probably 
the  most  ancient  of  all  Christian  romances,  which, 
if  it  were  translated  to-day  by  a  clever  man,  would 
probably  have,  in  the  pious  as  well  as  in  profane 
circles,  for  opposite  reasons,  the  greatest  success  ? 
Tertullian  wrote  his  treatise  on  "  Baptism  "  about 
the  year  196  ;  it  is  certainly  one  of  his  first  works. 
At  that  date  the  "  Acts  "  of  Thecla  enjoyed  great 
authority  in  certain  Christian  churches.  Tertullian 
combats  this  authority,  and  informs  us  that  the 
priest  of  Asia,  the  author  of  the  book,  was  already 
dead,  when  he  wrote.  We  are  not  too  bold,  there- 
fore, in  referring  the  date  of  the  composition  of 
this  book  to  the  year  175  or  180.  Paul  died  a  little 
before  the  year  70.  The  author  was  toward  St. 

*  In  the  Annulaire  de  F  Association  des  Etudes  Grecques,  for 
the  year  1877. 


15°       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

Paul,  therefore,  in  the  same  situation,  as  regards 
time,  that  we  are  in  now  toward  Voltaire. 

Certainly,  it  is  possible  that  the  text  of  the 
"Acts"  of  Thecla,  which  has  been  published  by 
Grabe  and  by  Tischendorf,  differs  in  many  respects 
from  that  which  Tertullian  had  in  view  ;  but  this 
text  is,  in  any  case,  very  ancient.  Tischendorf 
and  Grabe  are  persuaded  that  it  is  the  identical 
work  of  the  Asian  priest,  slightly  altered. 

That  which  decided  me,  moreover,  to  give  the 
passage  from  the  "Acts"  of  Thecla  a  place  in  my 
narrative,  is  the  astonishing  coincidence  of  the 
queer  portrait  sketched  by  the  priest  of  Asia  with 
one  of  the  most  entertaining  passages  of  the 
dialogue  entitled  "  Philopatris."  You  are  ac- 
quainted with  this  amusing  little  work,  preserved 
among  the  writings^of  Lucian,  but  which  certainly 
did  not  belong  to  the  scoffer  of  Samosata.  The 
"  Philopatris  "  is  dated  with  great  precision.  It  is 
from  the  reign  of  the  Emperor  Julian,  and  even 
from  the  end  of  this  reign,  about  the  year  363,  at 
the  time  when  the  unhappy  emperor  was  already 
engaged  in  his  fatal  war  with  the  Persians.  It  is 
the  work  of  an  enemy  of  Christianity,  solely  intent 
on  representing  the  new  believers  as  chimerical 
dreamers  and  enemies  of  the  Roman  state.  . 

"  Formerly,"   says   the  Christian  Triephon,    "  I 

nourished  myself  with  the  same  doctrines  as  thou, 

up  to  the  moment  when  I  had  the  good  fortune  to 

encounter  a  certain  Galilean*  with  a  bald  forehead 

*  Galilean  is  used  in  the  sense  of  Christian. 


ERNEST  REN  A  JV.  151 

and  a  long  nose,  who  had  ascended  to  the  third 
heaven,  and  who  had  learned  the  most  beautiful 
things  there.  That  man  regenerated  us  by  water, 
and  rending  us  away  from  the  world  of  the  un- 
godly introduced  us  into  the  company  of  the 
saints."*  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  question 
here  is  of  Saint  Paul  ;  the  ecstasy  in  the  third 
heaven  does  not  admit  of  hesitation.  It  is  hardly 
probable  that  the  pagan  author  of  the  "  Philo- 
patris"  had  read  the  romance  of  Thecla.  If  he 
agrees  with  the  priest  from  Asia,  it  is  because  he 
was  acquainted  with  the  traditional  type  which  the 
Christians  attributed  to  Saint  Paul.  This  tradition 
is  not  to  be  disdained  ;  you  are  not  ignorant  of 
M.  de  Rossi's  fine  writings  on  the  portraits  of  the 
apostles  Peter  and  Paul  ;  he  has  fully  established, 
if  not  their  value  as  real  portraits,  at  least  their 
high  antiquity.  When  I  see  the  coincidence  of 
these  respectable  images  with  the  texts,  I  really 
cannot  believe  that  I  have  given  too  free  play  to 
the  imagination  by  following  such  old  indications. 
The  Byzantine  historians  present  precisely  the 
same  description  of  Saint  Paul's  features.  I  will 
cite,  in  particular,  Saint  Nicephorusf  and  John 
Malala.J  These  authors  add  several  features  to 
those  of  the  "Acts"  of  Thecla  and  of  the  "  Philo- 
patris,"  evidently  derived  from  the  portraits  which 
they  had  before  their  eyes.  Now,  my  dear  col- 

*"  Philopatris,"  chapter  12.  f  Hist-Eccl.,  ii,  37. 

JChronogr.,  p.  257,  edit.  Bonn. 


152        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

league,  you  who  have  resided  in  Athens,  and  who 
are  so  well  acquainted  with  the  Eastern  Church, 
know  better  than  anyone  the  force  of  tradition 
in  the  religious  paintings  of  the  Greeks,  and  how 
invariably  each  saint's  type  is  there  established. 

The  most  extraordinary  point  is,  that  after  hav- 
ing sketched  the  portrait  of  St.  Paul,  as  I  have 
done,  Nicephorus,  Malala,  and  even  the  author  of 
the  "  Acts,"  to  a  certain  extent,  insist  that  Paul  was 
handsome,  in  spite  of  it  all.  How  can  we  explain 
this  singular  contradiction  ?  In  my  opinion,  by  the 
force  of  tradition,  which  imposed  itself  upon  those 
who  would  have  the  most  desired  that  the  face  of 
the  apostle  to  the  Gentiles  should  correspond  to 
the  importance  of  his  supernatural  role.  They 
affirmed  his  beauty  a  priori,  although  fidelity  to 
tradition  compelled  them  to  transcribe  certain 
traits  which,  more  or  less,  gave  the  lie  in  the  most 
startling  manner  to  this  affirmation. 

One  capital  reason,  finally,  forbids  us  to  neglect 
such  testimony  ;  it  is,  that  it  answers  perfectly  to 
the  idea  that  Saint  Paul  himself  gives  us  of  his  per- 
sonal appearance,  and  of  his  temperament  in  the 
two  epistles  to  the  Corinthians,  that  is  to  say,  in 
writings  whose  authenticity  is  absolutely  undeni- 
able. The  apostle  informs  us  that  his  appearance 
was  fragile,  and  not  in  the  least  imposing.  The 
frivolous  Corinthians  openly  gave  the  preference 
over  him  to  preachers  better  endowed  in  respect 
to  the  exterior,  like  Apollos.  "  His  letters  are 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  153 

weighty  and  powerful,"  they  said,  "  but  his  bodily 
presence  is  weak,  and  his  speech  contemptible."* 
Paul  makes  constant  allusion  to  his  bodily  weak- 
ness ;  he  represents  himself  as  a  man  who  has  only 
a  breath,  ill,  exhausted,  and  timid  withal,  without 
fine  appearance,  with  nothing  which  produces  an 
effect,  so  that  his  disciples,  according  to  him,  are 
meritorious  because  they  are  not  deterred  by  such 
a  wretched  exterior.  Neither  did  his  speech  pos- 
sess any  charm.  A  certain  timorousness,  embar- 
rassment, inaccuracy,  gave,  at  first,  a  poor  idea  of 
his  eloquence.  Like  a  man  of  tact,  he  himself  laid 
stress  on  his  external  defects,  and  made  capital  out 
of  them,  with  great  cleverness. 

Paul's  temperament,  according  to  his  own  testi- 
mony, was  no  less  singular  that  his  exterior.  His 
constitution — evidently  very  tough,  since  it  endured 
a  life  composed  entirely  of  fatigues — was  not 
sound.  He  speaks  mysteriously  of  a  secret  trial, 
"  of  a  thorn  in  the  flesh,"  which  he  compares  to  an 
angel  of  Satan,  occupied  in  buffeting  him,  and 
whom  God  has  permitted  to  attach  himself  to  him, 
to  prevent  his  growing  proud.  Volumes  have  been 
written  on  this  little  point,  or  rather,  on  that  thorn 
in  Paul's  flesh  (Skolops  en  sarki).  It  was  certainly 
an  infirmity  ;  Paul  forbids  us  to  understand  it  as 
carnal  lust,  since  he  himself  informs  us  that  he  was 
not  very  accessible  to  that  sort  of  temptation. 
For  two  months,  I  meditated  on  that  passage  ; 
that  thorn  in  the  flesh  seemed  to  me  the  exact 
*  II  Corinthians,  x,  10. 


154       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

definition  of  rheumatism,  a  real  angel  of  Satan,  who 
does,  in  fact,  buffet  cruelly  the  patient  who  is  deliv- 
ered over  to  him  by  way  of  salutary  humiliation. 

You  see,  then,  my  dear  colleague,  that  if  I  have 
gone  astray  in  the  matter  of  the  likeness  which  I 
have  traced  of  Saint  Paul,  it  is  much  less  through 
abuse  of  imagination  than  through  confidence  in 
tradition.  I  recognize  the  fact  that  this  tradition 
does  not  constitute  absolute  certainty  ;  it  is  certain 
that  a  good  photograph  would  be  worth  more.  In 
spite  of  the  doubts  which  cling  to  it,  it  seemed  to 
me,  nevertheless,  that  such  statements  should  not 
be  passed  over  in  silence.  Tradition,  legend,  even, 
cannot  be  entirely  banished  from  serious  history  ; 
they  contain  their  share  of  truth  ;  they  show,  if  not 
how  things  took  place,  at  least  how  they  were 
thought  of.  I  employ  the  most  scrupulous  forms 
of  language,  in  order  to  distinguish  that  which  is 
certain  from  that  which  is  probable,  that  which  is 
possible.  But  I  consider  myself  authorized  to 
accord  the  probable  and  the  possible  a  place,  on 
the  condition,  of  course,  of  multiplying  \\\t  perhaps 
and  //  seems  to  me,  and  the  other  phrases  expressive 
of  doubt,  of  which  one  must  not  be  sparing  on 
such  a  subject.  That  which  I  never  do  is  to  add 
a  material  circumstance  to  the  texts,  a  detail  to 
the  pictures  of  manners,  a  stroke  to  the  landscapes. 
I  understand  the  general  effects  in  my  own  way  ;  I 
never  introduce  into  them  an  element  which  has 
not  been  furnished  me.  Origins  are  always  ob- 


ERNEST  RENAX.  155 

scure  ;  in  order  to  divine  the  effaced  pages  of  the 
old  histories,  one  requires  a  power  of  divination 
into  which  there  enters  a  personal  element.  It  is 
almost  impossible  to  know  exactly  how  things  have 
taken  place  ;  the  goal  which  criticism  sets  up  for 
itself,  is  to  rediscover  the  manner,  or  the  various 
manners,  in  which  they  might  have  happened. 
But  the  assumption  of  material  circumstances  not 
supplied  by  the  texts  would  be  a  proceeding  fruit- 
less and  unworthy  of  the  historian  ;  I  never  employ 
it. 

I  desired,  my  dear  colleague,  to  clear  myself 
from  the  charge  of  having  made  Saint  Paul  ugly. 
That  great  man,  who  set  so  little  store  by  a  fine  ap- 
pearance for  himself,  since  he  tells  us  more  than 
half  a  score  of  times  that  he  possessed  the  least 
possible  external  advantages,  would  not  be  offended 
with  me  for  so  small  a  matter  ;  but  in  the  portrait, 
which  you  quote  as  coming  from  me,  there  would 
be  an  intention  to  caricature,  and  that  I  must  dis- 
pel. I  should  have  need  of  the  intercession  of  the 
saints.  A  good  Capuchin,  who  read  the  article 
which  I  published,  a  few  years  ago,  in  the  Journal 
des  DJbats,  about  Saint  Francis  d'Assisi,  was  de- 
lighted with  it,  and,  from  that  day  forth,  when  he 
heard  people  speak  ill  of  me,  he  said  :  "  Oh  !  no 
doubt  .  .  .  .  ;  but  he  spoke  well  of  Francis 
d'Assisi,  Saint  Francis  d'Assisi  will  save  him." 
That  is  a  powerful  intercession  ;  I  hope  that  Saint 
Paul  will  add  his  to  it,  in  consideration  of  the 


IS6        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

trouble  which  I  have  taken,  not  to  represent  him  as 
a  handsome  man,  but  to  show  him  as  one  of  the 
strongest  and  most  extraordinary  souls  that  have 
ever  existed. 

Believe,  my  dear  colleague,  in  my  most  sincere 
friendship. 


REPLY  TO  THE  SPEECH  OF  RECEPTION 
INTO  THE  FRENCH  ACADEMY  OF  M.  JULES 
CLARETIE,  FEBRUARY  21,  1889. 

Sir  :  It  is  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century 
since  we  met,  for  the  first  time,  at  M.  Michelet's. 
The  hospitable  place,  the  affection  which  attached 
us  to  the  master,  and  a  rare  community  of  senti- 
ments, united  us.  You  were  in  all  the  fire  of  your 
first  revolutionary  ardors  ;  I  was  under  the  influ- 
ence of  the  inward  conversations  which  I  had 
held  in  the  East,  like  the  disciples  of  Emmaus, 
with  a  mysterious  wayfarer.  We  came  to  an  under- 
standing with  considerable  promptness.  Shall  I 
confess  it  to  you  ?  I  believe  that,  during  those 
first  conversations,  we  said  some  evil  of  the 
French  Academy.  Oh  !  the  Academy,  sir,  is  infi- 
nitely indulgent  about  the  evil  that  is  said  of  it. 
Coarse  insults  do  not  reach  it  ;  it  accepts  the 
gentle  reproaches  of  men  of  talent  as  marks  of 
love,  and  it  takes  good  note  of  them  for  its  future 
favors.  Certainly,  there  is  one  point  upon  which 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  15? 

we  were  perfectly  right ;  it  was  when  we  expressed 
our  regret  that  the  company  did  not  count  among 
its  members  the  exquisite  master,  the  charming 
historian,  who  consoled  us  in  our  sadness  of  those 
days  !  But  what  would  you  have !  A  literary 
company  infallible  !  We  should  almost  be  afraid 
of  it.  Academies  make  no  pretension  to  possess- 
ing the  rule  of  absolute  justice.  It  is  sufficient  if 
they  are  right  sometimes.  Room  must  be  left 
for  unforeseen  unions,  for  the  witty  freaks  of 
chance,  for  amiable  encounters,  in  fine,  like  that 
which  has  brought  us  together  in  this  place  to-day- — 
you,  entered  as  a  volunteer  in  the  free  band  of 
literature  of  twenty  years  ago,  to  take  the  place  of 
conservator  in  this  senate — I,  a  mistaken  but  ob- 
stinate disciple  of  Saint  Tudal  or  Saint  Corentin,to 
wish  you  welcome,  and  to  press  your  -hand  in  the 
name  of  an  old  friendship. 

I  was  sure  that  I  should  please  you,  sir,  by  re- 
turning with  you  to  these  memories  of  the  time 
when,  as  Petrarch  says,  we  were,  in  part,  other 
men  than  we  are  to-day.  The  best  mark  of  nobil- 
ity, as  you  said  a  while  ago,  is  to  love  each  other 
as  we  were  in  our  youth,  to  remain  faithful  to  the 
illusions  athwart  which  we  first  discovered  life.  I 
do  not  think  that  we  have  changed  much  ;  we  are 
still  incorrigible  idealists.  I  see  you  trait  for  trait 
as  you  were  then.  Enthusiasm  was  the  dominant 
character  of  your  nature,  and  if  those  uneventful 
years,  in  the  middle  of  the  Second  Empire,  had 


158       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

permitted  hazardous  protestations,  I  think  that 
you  would  have  thrown  yourself  valiantly  into  the 
breach.  Revolution  was  like  a  gulf  which  sum- 
moned you.  Your  sentiments  were  all  for  that 
instinctive  devotion,  for  that  manner  of  toying 
with  death,  which  lends  an  irresistible  attraction  to 
the  characters  of  the  Revolution.  Your  history  of 
"  Prairial  "  is  a  genuine  martyrology.  You  have 
unfolded,  one  by  one,  in  the  "  Archives,"  those 
pages  penned  by  your  heroes  on  their  last  nights  ; 
you  have  kept  beneath  your  eye  the  dagger  which 
killed  Romme,  Bourbotte,  Soubrany  ;  like  the  dea- 
con in  the  times  of  persecution,  you  show  us  the 
red  phial  and  the  bloody  handkerchief.  "  Claretie's 
book,"  said  M.  Michelet,  "has  made  me  shudder. 
It  is  so  burning,  so  cruelly  true  !  "  You  have  gone 
through  all  our  fevers,  sir,  you  have  tasted  all  our 
fits  of  madness.  But,  what  shows  well  the  solidity 
of  your  judgment,  you  have  returned  from  your 
journey  to  the  country  of  death  without  leaving 
behind  any  part  of  yourself,  you  have  traversed  the 
chaos  without  ever  losing  your  footing. 

Since  that  time  you  have  marched  from  success 
to  success.  After  having  traversed  all  the  circles 
of  hell,  you  have  contrived  to  smile  so  naturally 
that  people  have  believed  that  you  have  done  noth- 
ing else  all  your  life.  Your  mind,  at  once  both 
supple  and  firm,  capable  of  becoming  passionate 
and  of  dominating  its  passion,  was  very  promptly 
approved  of  by  the  public,  which  has  applauded  you 


ERNEST  RE  NAN.  159 

at  the  theater,  followed  you  with  favor  in  history 
and  romance,  read  eagerly  those  weekly  chats — a 
new  style  of  article  which  you  so  ably  defined  a 
while  ago,  and  which  has,  to  some  extent,  super- 
seded the  ancient  French  form  of  correspondence. 
The  most  important  organs  of  public  opinion  have 
made  it  a  point  to  confide  to  you  their  chronicles 
of  the  day,  those  rapid  judgments  of  a  referee, 
which  class  a  case,  define  it,  frame  it,  while  leaving 
to  the  future  the  care  of  taking  it  up  again  and  dis- 
cussing it.  It  is  in  this  department,  sir,  that  you 
have  shown  yourself  to  be  in  direct  line  with  this 
century.  This  dear  nineteenth  century,  the  future 
will  say  a  great  deal  of  evil  concerning  it  ;  people 
will  be  unjust  if  they  do  not  recognize  the  fact  that 
it  was  charming.  Such  it  appears  in  your  pictures  ; 
it  constituted  one  of  my  relaxations  to  read  you, 
when  you  were  writing  those  beautiful  pages.  Even 
when,  by  profession,  one  has  chosen  the  company 
of  the  dead,  the  light  of  the  sun  is  sweet.  This 
Parisian  life  may  seem  superficial,  at  times,  I  con- 
fess ;  but  it  offers  an  admirable  procession  of 
pleasant  images.  It  is  a  good  furnace  to  consume 
that  surplus  of  life  which  philosophy  and  science 
do  not  absorb.  A  considerable  part  of  humanity 
lives  on  the  chronicle  of  Paris.  The  world  will 
lose  something  on  the  day  when  it  no  longer  has  it. 
Your  romances  in  book  form  have  added  fresh 
touches  to  that  great  romance  without  an  end 
which,  for  years,  you  have  unraveled  day  by  day. 


l6o       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

Your  episode  of  the  love  affairs  of  the  patient  at 
La  Salpetriere  is  exquisite.  The  "  Million  "  is  a  de- 
licious novel,  with  the  suavest  perfume.  The  "Flag," 
"M.Michelet's  Cane,"  breathe  a  touching  patriotism. 
•'  Monsieur  le  Ministre  "  has  raised  a  smile  at  cer- 
tain weaknesses  which  a  false  prudery  often  affects 
to  take  tragically.  Politics  have  touched  you  with- 
out stifling  you.  The  Comedie  Francaise  and  its 
interests,  which  are  inseparable  from  those  of  the 
French  mind,  have  prospered  in  your  hands.  When 
you  sought  our  votes,  assuredly  your  merits  were 
sufficient  to  obtain  them  ;  you  desire,  nevertheless, 
that  the  public  should  know  that  your  nomination 
contained  an  amiable  salute  from  our  company 
to  the  society  of  excellent  artists  which  is  charged, 
like  ourselves,  with  watching  over  the  national 
language  and  taste.  May  the  Comedie  Francaise, 
which  is  represented  here  in  virtue  of  a  right  that 
we  shall  take  great  care  not  to  forget,  be  so  good 
as  to  accept  the  expression  of  an  ancient  fellow- 
ship which  makes  us  proud  and  happy. 

In  choosing  you  to  take  the  place  of  one  of  our 
colleagues  whom  we  have  loved  the  mos^t,  we  were 
sure,  in  advance,  that  you  would  trace  a  perfect 
image  of  him.  You  have  completely  fulfilled  our 
expectations.  M.  Cuvillier-Fleury,  in  the  pages 
which  you  have  just  read,  is  precisely  as  we  knew 
him,  with  his  brisk  ways  of  an  upright  man,  his 
faith  in  healthy  literature,  his  confidence  in  rea- 
son and  good  cultivation  of  the  mind,  his  absolute 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  161 

devotion  to  France,  a  devotion  which  permitted 
the  most  loyal  of  patriots  to  consider  nothing  for- 
eign which  the  country  has  desired  and  admitted. 
You  have  eulogized  the  educator  in  the  best 
manner — I  mean  by  his  pupils — by  one  of  his 
pupils  in  particularly  that  accomplished  colleague 
whom  exile  has  taken  from  us,  and  whom  we  regret 
so  keenly  not  to  see  among  us  to-day,  to  join  with 
us  in  the  praises  bestowed  upon  his  master.  You 
have  eulogized  the  undaunted  liberal,  who  was 
shaken  by  no  reaction,  who  always  remained  faith- 
ful to  that  ideal  of  respect  for  the  right,  of  benevo- 
lence and  of  uprightness,  which  France  has  raised 
in  the  world  az  tho  creed  of  the  honest  man.  You 
have  painted  all  this  in  excellent  outlines  ;  for,  if 
you  have  not  been  intimately  acquainted  with  our 
colleague,  you  possessed,  in  regard  to  him,  the 
most  perfect  documents,  the  living  confidences  of 
a  discreet  witness  of  his  trials  and  his  joys.  The 
best  part  of  a  beautiful  life  is  that  which  is  contin- 
ued in  the  memories  of  a  faithful  wife.  You  have 
known  our  colleague  in  that  sweet  prolongation 
of  existence,  which  is  granted  to  those  who  are 
worthy  of  it.  He  has  appeared  to  you,  surrounded 
by  that  tranquil  light  which  precedes  the  grand 
oblivion  of  the  second  death  ;  thence  proceed  the 
delicate  shades  which  give  to  your  portrait  so  much 
harmony,  those  traits  of  profound  resemblance 
which  have  charmed  us  so  greatly. 
The  Journal  des  Dtbats  had  erected  a  rostrum 


162       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

which  was  surrounded  by  an  extraordinary  audi- 
ence, and  whence  each  word  fell  with  authority. 
The  anonymousness  of  a  group  of  men,  which 
parity  of  talents  and  similarity  of  opinions  merged, 
so  to  speak,  into  a  single  person,  Had  come  to  con- 
stitute a  political  and  social  power  of  whose  im- 
portance we  can  now  form  an  idea  only  with 
difficulty.  The  Messrs.  Berlin  presided,  with  the 
tact  and  moderation  which  an  undisputed  title 
confers,  over  the  debates  of  that  supreme  court 
of  the  French  mind  which  realized,  to  a  small 
extent  in  journalism,  what  the  Academy  is  in 
literature.  M.  Cuvillier-Fleury  was,  .for  the  space 
of  fifty  years,  one  of  the  most  active  members 
of  that  exalted  council  of  Dii  Consentes*  His 
criticism,  a  perpetual  lesson  of  good  sense  and  up- 
rightness, was  extended  to  extremely  varied  sub- 
jects. It  was  rightly  considered,  then,  that  the  rule 
of  the  good  and  of  the  beautiful  is,  in  all  points, 
identical,  and  that  a  mind  formed  by  the  good  dis- 
cipline of  antiquity  may  serve  in  the  most  diverse 
exercises. 

Nearly  the  entire  century  passed  thus  before 
the  eyes  of  our  colleague,  and  he  judged  it  well. 
Whatever  may  be  the  opinion  which  people  may 
one  day  profess  regarding  the  literary  movement 

*  In  the  Etrusco-Romish  language  of  religion,  the  Dii  Con- 
sentes were  the  twelve  superior  deities  (six  male,  six  female) 
who  formed  the  common  council  of  the  gods  assembled  by 
Jupiter. —  Trans,  note. 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  163 

of  which  the  year  1815  may  be  regarded  as 
the  initial  date,  and  1870  as  the  final  date,  no 
enlightened  man  can  refuse  to  that  which  was 
in  agitation  during  that  period,  in  the  depths  of 
the  French  conscience,  originality,  goodness,  and 
fecundity.  The  stock  of  ideas  bequeathed  by 
the  eighteenth  century  and  the  Revolution  was 
insufficient.  A  slender  thread  of  clear  voice  may 
possess  agreeable  notes,  but  it  will  not  suffice  for 
all  the  modulations  of  the  human  spirit.  In  rid- 
ding itself  of  the  chains  of  old  beliefs,  which 
easily  degenerate  into  a  deliberate  choice  of  intel- 
lectual mediocrity,  the  eighteenth  century  imposed 
upon  itself  a  far  more  burdensome  chain  than  that 
of  orthodoxy — the  yoke  of  a  sort  of  narrow  good 
sense,  reducing  the  world  of  the  mind  to  something 
scanty,  petty,  coldly  rational.  Science  had  been 
released  from  the  restrictions  which  religion  caused 
to  weigh  it  down,  until  nearly  the  eve  of  the  Revo- 
lution, and  that  is,  surely,  a  point  of  capital  im- 
portance ;  but  a  sort  of  dryness  of  heart  and  im- 
agination rendered  this  progress  hardly  perceptible, 
on  the  whole.  People  were  free  to  think,  and,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  they  thought  very  little  ;  the  im- 
mensity of  the  events  of  war  and  of  the  political 
revolutions  had  absorbed  the  best  forces  of  hu- 
manity. The  world  longed  for  something,  and  in 
fact,  as  soon  as  peace  appeared,  and  under  the  in- 
fluence of  the  name  alone  of  liberty,  an  extraordi- 
nary awakening  took  place  in  all  classes.  People 


164       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

opened  their  minds  to  foreign  ideas  ;  a  multitude 
of  things  which  had  hitherto,  had  no  names  in 
French,  asserted  their  right  of  entry  into  the 
inclosed  field  of  our  battles  and  gained  a  great 
deal  by  being  transferred  to  this  fresh  atmos- 
phere. People  comprehended  the  infinite,  the 
popular,  the  spontaneous.  The  language  gained 
in  suppleness,  in  extent,  in  shading.  Humanity 
took  to  reflecting,  more  harshly  than  it  had  ever 
done  before,  on  its  destiny.  We  do  not  know 
whether  all  the  problems  which  that  period  pro- 
pounded have  been  solved  ;  but,  assuredly,  history 
will  refer  to  the  first  half  of  our  century  immense 
conquests  in  the  order  of  the  mind,  a  general  sen- 
timent of  courtesy,  of  gentleness,  of  taste  for  lib- 
erty, an  extraordinary  enlargement  of  the  circle  of 
the  imagination,  a  notion  of  science,  of  philoso- 
phy and  of  poetry  of  which  our  respectable  ancest- 
ors in  the  eighteen  century  possessed  only  a  very 
distant  sentiment. 

M.  Cuvillier-Fleury  assisted  in  this  grand  intel- 
lectual battle  of  criticism,  and  in  the  quality  of  a 
combatant.  You  have  explained  to  us  finely  the 
species  of  duality  which  always  divided  the  liter- 
ary conscience  of  our  colleague.  Although  the 
base  of  his  classic  faith  was  never  shaken,  he  was 
powerfully  attracted  by  the  moderns.  At  bottom, 
he  had  a  weakness  for  that  which  he  combated 
and  a  secret  taste  for  the  qualities  which  he  did 
not  commend.  Dulcia  vitia  > — charming  defects — 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  165 

the  expression  is  Quintilian's.  It  might  have 
come  from  M.  Cuvillier-Fleury.  He  blamed  and 
loved  at  one  and  the  same  time.  He  has  been 
shown  to  us  as  wittily  taking  a  certain  book  from 
the  hands  of  his  pupil  and  perusing  it  himself  with 
passionate  delight.  He  never  departed  from  the 
rules  of  judgment  and  naturalness,  and,  neverthe- 
less, they  contained  some  of  those  "  charming  de- 
fects "  which  he  was  forced  to  love.  Was  it  weak- 
ness ?  No,  it  was  impartiality,  profound  instinct 
for  the  truth.  Almost  all  the  faults  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  have  come  from  a  lofty  principle. 
We  are  sure  that  posterity  will  pass  the  sponge 
over  many  deviations  from  the  right  path,  at  the 
memory  of  so  much  ardor,  so  much  sincerity,  so 
many  noble  aspirations. 

How  can  one  be  just,  in  fact,  otherwise  than  by 
loving  and  hating,  turn  and  turn  about,  that  brilliant 
generation  which  received  with  a  light  hand  and 
bore  without  embarrassment  the  heavy  heritage  of 
ancient  France,  of  the  Revolution,  of  the  Empire, 
but  which  was  not  able  to  transmit  anything  to 
those  who  came  after  it  ;  which  caused  the  value  of 
finished  form  to  be  felt  in  literature,  and  left  but 
few  irreproachable  works  ;  which  instituted  a  re- 
action against  a  general  tone  of  factitious  pom- 
pousness  and  of  exaggerated  solemnity,  and  was, 
itself,  rarely  exempt  from  affectation  ;  which, 
with  a  wealth,  an  exuberance,  an  amplitude  of 
genius  which  were  truly  extraordinary,  produced 


1 66       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

thousands  of  excellent  books,  not  one  of  which  is 
quite  sure  of  a  future  ?  The  cause  of  this  lies, 
above  all,  I  hasten  to  say,  in  the  infinitely  delicate 
nature  of  the  thoughts  which  we  seek  to  express. 
The  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,  revolv- 
ing in  a  very  limited  circle  of  ideas,  denying  them- 
selves every  thought  which  could  not  be  contained 
in  the  ready-made  frame,  more  easily  attained  to  a 
finished  style  than  a  century  like  ours,  which  is 
surcharged  with  knowledge  and  is  persuaded  that 
the  human  mind  is  being  restricted  when  it  is  con- 
fined to  clear  ideas.  There  are  so  many  things 
which  we  can  only  augur,  divine,  presage  !  The 
defects  of  the  moderns  frequently  arise  from  the 
fact  that,  in  a  hand  to  hand  struggle  with  the  in- 
finite, they  wish  to  say  too  many  things.  But  how 
many  other -weaknesses  these  great  innovators, 
whose  disciples  we  are,  might  have  avoided  !  The 
good  epochs  of  Greek  and  Latin  antiquity,  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,  had  accus- 
tomed us,  when  it  was  a  question  of  intellectual 
works,  to  seek  naturalness  before  all  things  ;  peo- 
ple wished  to  touch  a  man  in  the  author  ;  modesty 
was  considered  one  of  the  conditions  of  pleasing. 
All  that  was  changed  by  the  new  generation.  The 
pain,  often  necessary,  which  a  delicate  soul  often 
accomplishes  at  the  beginning  of  life,  only  with 
fear  and  trembling,  was  called,  by  a  frightful  bar- 
barism, "asserting  one's  self."  People  were  satis- 
fied with  sonorous  words,  which  the  great  centuries 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  167 

had  employed  with  much  discretion.  Unbridled 
vanity  and  presumption,  the  love  of  success  at 
any  price,  were  received  by  the  public  with  exag- 
gerated indulgence.  A  certain  romancer  pro- 
claimed himself  as  greater  than  Napoleon,  and  this 
did  not  appear  too  strong.  The  most  immoder- 
ate effusions  of  a  childish  braggadocio  succeeded 
in  making  themselves  accepted. 

How  good  the  ancient  codes  of  morals  were, 
applied  to  literature  !  Old  masters  of  Port  Royal, 
who  thought  that,  when  one  possesses  a  superior- 
ity, one  must  seek,  above  all  things,  to  conceal  it, 
what  would  you  have  said  to  this  twaddle,  to  this 
false  varnish  of  greatness,  which  passed  by,  'with 
head  held  high,  fifty  years  ago,  without  being 
stigmatized  by  Pascal  ?  Ah  !  sir,  it  is  difficult  for 
an  epoch  to  get  along  without  an  aristocracy  ! 
Tact  and  taste  need  protection.  What  an  error  to 
believe  that  a  society  where  the  man  of  letters  oc- 
cupies, or  thinks  that  he  occupies,  the  first  place, 
can  keep  its  waterline  straight  !  Human  affairs 
are  far  more  complicated  than  is  believed  ;  the 
dignity  of  the  writer  is  better  sheltered  behind 
ancient  social  conventions  than  behind  the  pre- 
tended guarantees  of  property.  The  idea  which 
people  formed  for  themselves,  forty  years  ago,  of 
the  man  of  letters,  rich,  brilliant,  making  his  way 
gallantly  in  the  world,  habituated  them  to  the  false 
conception  that  the  writer,  that  is  to  say,  the  honest 
man  who  has  something  to  say  to  the  public,  exer- 


1 68        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF9 

cises  a  profession,  and  a  lucrative  profession. 
Such  a  conception,  founded  on  a  moral  error, 
caused  solid  acquirements  to  be  neglected,  encour- 
aged superficial  work,  diminished  in  the  masses 
that  respect  which  they  naturally  entertain  for 
nobility  of  mind. 

One  of  the  consequences  of  this  literature, 
w.hich  was,  above  all,  witty  and  light,  was  to  ac- 
custom the  public  to  be  too  much  amused.  The 
almost  exclusive  perusal  of  romances  became  a 
real  source  of  degradation  for  women.  Reading, 
to  be  salutary,  ought  to  be  an  exercise  implying 
some  labor.  From  this  point  of  view,  it  is  good 
that  books  should  not  be  written  entirely  in  ordi- 
nary language.  People  reached  the  point  of 
demanding,  as  an  essential  condition  of  prose 
destined  to  persons  of  society,  that  it  should  not 
necessitate  any  sort  of  attention  on  the  part  of  the 
reader.  In  this  there  was  a  just  return  to  human 
things.  France,  in  the  eighteenth  century,  had 
made  its  liberal  and  anticlerical  campaign  as  an 
amusement.  It  was  decreed  that  this  amusement 
should  prove  fatal  to  it.  It  had  slain  the  folios 
of  the  Benedictines,  the  quartos  of  the  academies. 
A  little  frivolous  volume,  to  fit  the  hand,  said  its 
enemies — there  it  is  dying  of  lack  of  force.  One 
cannot  count  the  truth  for  an  indifferent  thing 
with  impunity.  Even  light  literature  can  be  made 
seriously,  and  without  the  master  faculties  of  the 
reason  undergoing  damage. 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  169 

To  sum  up,  in  a  word,  the  defects  of  an  epoch 
which,  by  every  hypothesis,  will  remain  great  and 
honored,  I  will  say  that  the  half  century,  of  which 
M.  Cuvillier-Fleury  has  been  the  enlightened 
critic,  was  too  literary  an  epoch.  Admiration  was 
complacent  ;  authors  were  spoiled  with  petting  ; 
people  habituated  them  to  be  easy  toward  them- 
selves, to  seek  brilliancy,  flashy  colors,  and  the 
beauties  of  ostentation.  Poetry  and  reality  were 
too  much  mixed.  Poetry  is  made  to  carry  us  out 
of  our  depth,  to  console  us  for  life  with  dreams, 
not  to  influence  life.  At  the  epoch  of  the  Astre'e, 
plebeians  of  the  Quartier  Saint-Antoine  were  seen 
to  sell  their  stocks  in  commerce,  in  order  to  turn 
shepherd  and  pasture  imaginary  sheep.  Nowa- 
days, the  dreams  are  less  innocent.  Morbus  lite- 
rarius ! — The  literary  malady.  The  character- 
istic symptom  of  this  evil  is  that  people  love  less 
things  themselves  than  the  literary  effect  which 
they  produce.  One  comes  to  view  the  world  as 
through  a  theatrical  illusion.  The  public,  attacked 
by  the  same  malady,  seeks  nothing  but  what  makes 
a  picture  ;  the  illumination  of  the  footlights  dis- 
gusts them  with  the  light  of  day.  In  this  manner, 
all  right  appreciation  of  things  is  impeded.  The 
good  and  the  beautiful  must  first  be  loved  for 
themselves  ;  the  aureole  created  by  success,  the 
applause  of  the  human  race,  come  afterward,  or 
do  not  come  at  all.  To  tell  the  truth,  they  come 
when  they  are  not  sought ;  they  do  not  come 


1 7 o       RECOL LECTIONS  AND  LE  TTERS  OF 

when  they  are  sought.  It  is  not  wholesome  to 
talk  so  much  about  glory,  nor  to  adjudge  to  one's 
self  so  haughtily  the  future.  The  future  will  not, 
perhaps,  have  much  time  to  read  us  ;  it  will  be  too 
much  occupied  with  itself  to  occupy  itself  much 
with  us.  I  fear  that  the  abnegation  of  the  realistic 
writers,  who  aim  at  nothing,  so  they  say,  except  to 
prepare  documents  in  the  modest  intention  that 
future  centuries  may  know  us,  will  be  but  ill 
requited. 

This  question,  which  we  hear  so  often  pro- 
pounded :  "  What  will  remain  one  of  these  days, 
of  the  works  of  the  nineteenth  century?"  has 
something  superficial  and  ingenuous  about  it. 
People  have  been  led  astray  by  the  great  fact 
which  has  happened  twice  or  thrice  in  history,  of 
classic  literatures,  whose  prestige  has  extended  to 
very  diverse  nations,  in  very  different  centuries, 
and  which  have  remained  models  for  the  human 
race.  It  is  not  probable  that  this  phenomenon 
will  occur  again.  The  progress  of  civilization,  of 
which  we  are  the  witnesses,  lies  in  extension,  not 
in  delicacy.  We  shall  never  again,  judging  from 
all  appearances,  see  languages  learned  with  a  view 
to  literary  culture  by  those  whose  mother  tongue 
they  are  not.  The  separation  of  nationalities, 
carried  to  excess,  will  make  each  nation  think  that 
there  is  no  need  to  go  and  ask  models  from  other 
nations.  Moreover,  people  will  consult  more  than 
they  will  read,  The  books  of  prime  importance 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  ijl 

will  be  made  over  every  twenty-five  years.  Each 
newcomer  will  profit  by  his  predecessors,  and  will 
probably  say  a  great  deal  of  evil  about  them  at  the 
same  time.  Translation  itself  will  interfere  with 
the  reading  of  originals.  Moliere,  Montesquieu, 
Voltaire,  owed  little  to  translations ;  they  were 
read  in  French. 

Vanity  of  vanities,  sir  !  The  centuries  which 
prate  the  most  about  immortality  are  those  which 
are  the  least  assured  of  it.  I  will  say  as  much  of 
that  strange  abuse  of  the  word  genius,  which  is 
never  more  prodigally  employed  than  when  there 
is  the  least  of  it,  and  of  those  pretended  privileges 
which  the  true  man  of  genius  has  never  either 
known  or  claimed.  Genius  is,  in  general,  very 
modest  !  it  asks  only  one  thing,  that  it  may  be  left 
in  peace.  It  is  wrong  to  make  existence  hard  for 
it  ;  but  its  duty,  also,  is  to  win  pardon  for  its 
singularity  by  dint  of  simplicity,  of  apparent  vul- 
garity, of  deference  for  other  men.  The  future  is 
to  the  brave,  I  willingly  admit  ;  but  the  future 
belongs,  above  all,  to  the  modest  ;  those  will 
endure  who  have  never  given  it  a  thought,  and 
who  have  never  believed  themselves  assured  of 
the  suffrages  of  posterity. 

In  order  to  establish  those  literary  authorities 
which  are  called  classic  centuries,  something 
especially  healthy  and  solid  is  necessary.  Com- 
mon household  bread  is  of  more  value  here  than 
pastry.  Literature  which  desires  to  be  classic, 


172        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

that  is  to  say,  universal,  should  be  of  a  nature  to 
be  applied.  That  literature  is  good,  in  this 
respect,  which,  transferred  to  practice,  makes  a 
noble  life.  A  life  conducted  according  to  the 
literary  maxims  of  the  seventeenth  century  will  be 
upright  and  honest,  whatever  the  proportions  of 
that  life  may  be.  Modern  literature  cannot 
endure  this  ordeal.  Assuredly,  the  artist  is  not 
responsible  for  the  nonsense  that  people  make  of 
his  work.  The  rustic,  who  stupidly  swallows  a 
perfume  that  has  been  given  to  him  to  smell,  can- 
not blame  anyone  but  himself  for  his  folly.  But, 
in  order  to  be  eternal,  the  least  that  one  can  do  is 
to  submit  to  some  exactions.  Everything  which 
owes  something  to  the  caprice  of  the  moment 
passes  away  like  that  caprice.  What  fashion 
makes,  fashion  also  unmakes.  A  thousand  years 
hence,  probably  only  two  books,  the  oldest  books 
of  humanity,  will  be  reprinted,  Homer  and  the 
Bible.  I  am  mistaken  ;  for  the  tedium  of  future 
generations,  extracts,  chosen  by  the  professors  of 
literature  of  that  day,  will  also  be  printed,  with  a 
view  to  examinations.  There  will  be,  perhaps,  a 
few  half-pages  of  some  of  us  among  them,  accom- 
panied by  an  interlinear  translation  in  Volapiik. 
Debemur  morti  nos  nostraque — We  and  our  works 
must  die. 

Thus,  in  consequence  of  some  errors  in  aesthet- 
ics and  history,  liberal  France  lost  the  fruit  of 
rare  efforts  and  of  exquisite  gifts.  The  authors  of 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  173 

that  day  have  the  air  of  believing  that  they  will 
remain  forever  young  ;  they  take  no  care  to  pre- 
pare for  themselves  a  literary  old  age.  They  for- 
get, above  all,  that  humanity  is  a  noble  personage, 
and  that  it  must  be  represented  in  its  nobility. 
After  their  day,  people  amused  themselves  with  alow 
class  of  scamps,  of  demoralized  scapegraces,  with 
Vautrin  and  Quinola.  They  allowed  themselves 
to  acquire  a  false  taste  for  the  ugly,  the  abject. 
They  tried  to  make  a  viand  of  that  which  should 
serve  only  as  condiment.  The  painting  of  a 
manure-heap  can  be  justified,  provided  that  a 
beautiful  flower  springs  from  it  ;  otherwise,  the 
manure-heap  is  only  repulsive.  The  reality,  alas  ! 
one  encounters  at  every  step.  It  has  no  need  of 
being  provided  with  documents  ;  we  know  it  but 
too  well. 

People  insisted  on  novelty  at  any  price.  They 
established  an  auction  where  they  outbid  each 
other  for  paradoxes.  They  had  reached  the  last 
icy  peaks  of  Parnassus,  where  all  life  had  ceased  ; 
they  insisted  upon  mounting  still,  and  were  aston- 
ished that  the  public  no  longer  followed.  The 
public,  on  the  whole,  displayed  a  great  deal  of 
sound  sense.  Enervated  by  the  brief  duration  of 
literary  reputations,  it  lost  all  faith  in  literature, 
and  beheld  in  it  only  a  pack  of  cards  tumbling 
down  upon  each  other.  The  man  of  merit  who, 
instead  of  flinging  himself,  in  cold  blood,  into 
Etna  like  Empedocles,  demanded  the  honor  of 


174       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

his  life  only  from  serious  services,  was  held  as  of 
very  small  account.  A  fundamental  error!  Woe 
to  the  nation  which  does  not  know  how  to  make 
proper  use  of  the  useful  man  who  is  exempt 
from  all  pretensions  to  genius  and  immortality  ! 
Genius  is  rare  and  often  dangerous  in  application  ; 
in  order  to  make  sure  that  it  will  live,  a  nation 
should  be  able  to  dispense  with  it ;  it  cannot  dis- 
pense with  good  sense,  conscience,  assiduity  in 
labor,  uprightness. 

A  great  moral  enfeeblement  was  the  consequence 
of  the  bad  intellectual  diet  to  which  France  had 
subjected  herself.  The  poison  produced  its  effect, 
though  it  had  been  taken  in  small  doses.  People 
had  created  for  themselves  a  necessity  for  un- 
healthy liquors,  good,  at  the  most,  to  tickle  the 
palate  for  a  moment ;  that  which  was  inoffensive  as 
a  diversion,  became  bad  as  a  habit.  True  intellec- 
tual culture,  which  had  been  too  much  neglected, 
took  its  revenge  ;  giddiness  had  no  longer  any 
counterpoise.  An  hour  of  surprise  sufficed  to  ruin 
a  compromise  devised  by  the  wisest  minds.  A 
cycle  of  horrible  occurrences  was  opened  by  those 
ill-starred  days,  which  France  has  not  yet  expiated, 
it  would  seem.  They  cheerfully  committed  the 
capital  error  of  submitting  to  the  masses  the  ques- 
tion which  it  was  the  least  capable  of  answering  ; 
the  question  as  to  the  form  of  government  and  the 
choice  of  a  sovereign.  The  child  of  ten,  on  whom 
they  had  imprudently  conferred  the  rights  of 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  1 75 

majority,  committed  follies  ;  what  is  there  sur- 
prising in  that  ?  They  demanded  reason  of  that 
throng  which,  in  one  day,  could  show  itself  the 
dupe  of  the  grossest  charlatanism  and  stupidly 
accessible  to  every  calumny.  They  imagined  that, 
without  a  dynasty,  they  could  constitute  a  per- 
manent brain  for  a  nation.  Hence  an  annoying 
diminution  in  the  central  reason  ;  the  sensorium 
commune  of  the  nation  found  itself  reduced  to 
almost  nothing.  With  precious  qualities  of  courage, 
generosity,  amiability,  the  best  endowed  of  nations, 
by  dint  of  having  allowed  its  center  of  gravity  to 
descend  too  low,  beheld  its  destiny  committed  to 
the  caprice  of  an  average  of  opinion  inferior  to  the 
grasp  of  the  most  mediocre  sovereign  called  to  the 
throne  by  the  hazards  of  heredity. 

Weak  in  resistance,  this  generation  showed  itself 
harsh  and  narrow  in  reaction.  We  have  seen,  sir, 
the  blind  reaction  which  followed  1848,  sad  years 
in  which  our  youth  languished,  and  whose  bitter- 
ness we  would  gladly  spare  those  who  shall  come 
after  us.  Our  fathers  did  not  fulfill  toward  us  the 
first  duty  of  a  generation  to  its  offspring,  which  is 
to  leave  it  an  established  order  and  fixed  national 
framework.  We  shall,  probably,  fail  in  this  duty 
toward  those  who  come  after  us.  Betrayed  by  our 
elders,  we  shall  have  for  excuse  that  we  could  not 
bequeath  that  which  we  had  not  received.  We 
made  great  sacrifices  to  draw  the  least  evil  result 
from  an  evil  age  ;  they  will  serve  no  purpose. 


176       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

Ah  !  how  true  is  the  old  Hebrew  proverb  :  "  Our 
fathers  have  eaten  green  grapes,  and  the  teeth  of 
their  children  are  set  on  edge  !  " 

Are  we  to  bring  accomplished  facts  up  for  trial  ? 
Certainly  not,  sir.  Our  tastes  in  history  are  very 
nearly  the  same,  I  think.  We  have,  if  I  may  say 
so,  the  same  set  of  patrons,  fools,  and  enthusi- 
asts. Fanatical  causes  are  so  dear  to  me  that  I 
never  narrate  one  of  those  heroic  stories  without 
feeling  a  desire  to  join  the  band  of  believers,  to 
suffer  and  die  with  them.  You  love  your  Camille 
Desmoulins,  your  condemned  of  "  PrairiaP' ;  you 
grow  impassioned  in  behalf  of  each  one  of  them. 
I  love  them,  after  your  description,  with  their 
melancholy  eyes,  their  long  hair  which  gives  them 
the  look  of  apostles,  those  ardent  convictions, 
that  style,  at  once  declamatory  and  touching. 
There  is,  nevertheless,  a  little  difference  between 
us,  perhaps.  We  are  thoroughly  agreed  upon 
the  point  that  the  progress  of  the  world  takes 
place  by  impulses  communicated  by  fanatics  and 
violent  men.  Only,  you  protest  when  they  are 

guillotined After  all,  they  have  willed  it  so. 

The  work  of  fanatics  succeeds  only  on  condition 
that  one  speedily  gets  rid  of  them.  Careers  of 
this  sort  should  be  brief.  Let  us  imagine  Camille 
Desmoulins  and  Lucile  dying  in  1840,  or  1845. 
It  would  be  as  shocking  as  to  picture  to  ourselves 
Jeanne  d'Arc  living  to  the  age  of  seventy.  The 
prophet  who  passed  over  the  walls  of  Jerusalem 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  177 

crying:  "  The  voice  of  the  East  !  The  voice  of  the 
West !  A  voice  against  Jerusalem  and  the  temple  !  " 
kept  within  his  part,  when  he  added  :  "  A  voice 
against  me  ! "  and  the  stone  launched  by  the 
Roman  balistas,  which  struck  him  full  in  the 
breast,  gave  him  the  only  death  that  was  really 
suitable  for  him. 

The  Revolution,  as  you  have  very  plainly  per- 
ceived, must  not  be  judged  by  the  same  rules 
which  are  applied  to  ordinary  situations  of  human- 
ity. Viewed  outside  its  grandiose  and  fatal  char- 
acter, the  Revolution  is  only  odious  and  horrible. 
On  the  surface  it  is  an  orgy  for  which  there 
is  no  name.  In  that  strange  battle,  men  count 
in  proportion  to  their  ugliness.  Everything  serves 
there,  save  good  sense  and  moderation.  The 
foolish,  the  incapable,  the  wicked,  are  attracted 
to  it  by  the  instinctive  feeling  that  the  moment 
for  their  usefulness  has  arrived.  The  success  of 
the  days  of  the  Revolution  seems  obtained  by  the 
collaboration  of  all  crimes  and  all  insanities.  The 
wretch  who  knows  nothing  but  how  to  slay  ex- 
periences fine  days.  The  fallen  woman,  the  mad- 
woman from  La  Salpetriere  finds  employment 
there.  The  times  demanded  madcaps  and  rascals  ; 
they  were  served  to  their  heart's  content.  One 
would  have  pronounced  it  the  yawning  of  the  gulf  of 
the  abyss,  with  all  the  infernal  vapors  of  a  corrupt 
century  obscuring  the  heavens. 

But  we  must  not  dwell  upon  these  hideous  de- 


178       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

tails,  which  are  the  price  we  pay  fo.r  the  aid  of  the 
populace.  When  one  surveys  the  whole— when 
one  takes  into  account,  above  all,  this  grand  coeffi- 
cient of  human  things,  victory,  which  causes  many 
mad  attempts  to  be  judged  by  their  success— the 
general  phenomenon  of  the  Revolution  appears  like 
one  of  those  great  movements  in  history  which  are 
dominated  and  directed  by  a  superior  will.  The 
fixed  idea  with  some  of  these  madmen:  "The 
Revolution  must  succeed  at  any  price,"  became  an 
obsession,  a  voice  from  without  which  imposed 
itself,  a  tyrannical  suggestion.  From  that  moment 
the  Revolution  had  a  genius,  which  presided  day 
by  day  over  its  acts  and  which,  in  the  matter  of 
success,  made  no  mistake.  A  pact  of  terror  united 
thousands  of  men,  and  put  them  into  that  state  of 
impersonal  enthusiasm  in  which  one  is  swept  away, 
to  life,  or  to  death,  upon  a  ship  which  one  has 
launched  but  which  one  can  no  longer  steer. 

France  alone  could  offer  this  incredible  mixture 
of  mind  and  ingenuousness,  of  ironical  gayety  and 
concentrated  wrath.  It  was  a  mad  "  emprise," 
after  the  fashion  of  the  chivalrous  vows  of  the 
Middle  Ages.  The  wagerer  succeeded  by  virtue 
of  fury,  by  love,  by  enraged  conviction  that  he 
must  succeed.  And  these  men,  possessed  of  a 
fixed  idea,  were  so  thoroughly  in  accord  with  that 
which  was  willed  by  the  force  of  things,  that  one 
asks  one's  self  in  vain  what  the  world  would  be  had 
the  Revolution  not  succeeded.  It  was  necessary, 


ERNEST  REN  AX.  i?9 

as  the  attack  which  saves  or  kills.  It  leaves  us 
suspended  between  admiration  and  horror.  The 
Revolution  is  the  most  violent  of  human  spectacles 
that  it  has  been  given  to  us  to  study.  Even  the 
siege  of  Jerusalem  cannot  be  compared  with  it.  It 
was  a  work  as  unconscious  as  a  cyclone,  carrying 
away  without  selection  everything  within  its  reach. 
Reason  and  justice  are  trifles  to  the  colossal  whirl- 
wind. Like  the  leviathan  of  the  book  of  Job,  it  is 
created  to  be  irresistible  ;  like  the  abyss,  it  fulfills 
its  vocation,  never  saying,  "  It  is  enough." 

That  is  why  the  men  of  the  Revolution  are  the  ob- 
jects of  such  contradictory  judgments.  These  labor- 
ers at  the  work  of  giants,  viewed  by  themselves,  are 
pygmies.  It  was  the  work  which  was  great,  and 
which,  taking  possession  of  them,  transformed  them 
in  accordance  with  its  needs  ;  when  the  fit  was  past, 
they  became  once  more  what  they  had  been  be- 
fore, that  is  to  say,  mediocre.  Take  your  Camille 
Desmoulins,  for  example.  I  think  I  shall  not 
wound  you,  sir,  if  I  tell  you  that  he  really  amounted 
to  very  little,  a  straw  borne  by  the  wind,  an 
enthusiast,  a  blackguard  of  genius,  as  you  call  him, 
a  giddypate,  carried  away  by  the  intoxication  of 
the  hour.  His  philosophy  of  history  does  not  ex- 
tend beyond  Vertot's  "Roman  Revolutions."  His 
styJe  !  ah,  sir,  you  have  upheld  it!  I  compliment 
you  on  your  patience.  In  those  days  a  man  was  a 
great  writer  for  two  or  three  years.  The  terrible 
gravity  of  events  made  men  of  genius  for  a  year, 


l8o       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

for  three  months.  Then,  abandoned. by  the  spirit 
which  had  sustained  them  for  a  moment,  these  heroes 
of  a  day  fell  with  their  strength  exhausted,  mad- 
dened, haggard,  stupefied,  incapable  of  beginning 
life  again.  Napoleon  did  right  in  making  expedi- 
tionaries  and  subaltern  chiefs  of  them. 

Their  literature,  as  a  whole,  is  very  weak. 
They  wrote  badly  and,  what  is  singular  in  men  so 
thoroughly  convinced,  in  a  pretentious  manner. 
When  one  undertakes  to  print  their  complete  works, 
one  finds  one's  self  face  to  face  with  an  empty 
void.  To  tell  the  truth,  their  work  was  the 
Revolution.  For  so  short  a  passage  athwart 
life  it  was  not  worth  the  trouble  to  cast  one's 
words  in  bronze  or  to  build  solidly  ;  they  aimed 
only  at  the  effect  of  the  moment.  Such  an  epoch 
could  not  produce  a  solid  style,  any  more  than 
it  could  produce  durable  edifices.  Member  of  the 
Convention  Romme,  on  the  eve  of  his  death, 
writes  pages  and  pages.  He  is  anxious  "  that  people 
should  know  how  he  died."  This  is  ingenuous 
and  awkward.  Nevertheless,  I  read  and  reread, 
with  profound  emotion,  that  passage  filled  with 
somber  fire  which  you  have  published.  Your  pic- 
ture of  the  death  of  the  last  Montagnards  is  touch- 
ing and  beautiful.  The  horrible  machine  worked 
badly  that  day.  It  was  necessary  to  set  Bourbotte 
up  again.  He  profits  by  the  fact  to  make  a  speech  ; 
with  his  neck  fast  in  the  fatal  plank  he  still  speaks. 
Duroy,  with  his  head  under  the  knife,  exclaims  : 


EXNES7"  REN  AN.  181 

"  Unite  ;  all  embrace  each  other  ;  'tis  the  only 
means  of  saving  the  republic  !  "  Ridiculous 
phrases,  uttered  in  such  a  situation,  undergo  a  great 
change  in  their  aesthetic  character.  They  possess 
at  least  one  quality — they  are  always  sincere. 

The  worst  enemies  of  the  great  men  of  the  Rev- 
olution are  those  who,  believing  that  they  do  them 
honor,  put  them  in  the  category  of  ordinary  great 
men.  They  were  unconsciously  sublime  men,  who 
won  their  pardon  by  their  youth,  their  inexperience, 
their  faith.  I  do  not  like  to  have  titles  of  nobility 
conferred  upon  them.  They  go  alone,  like  the  ex- 
ecutioner. With  several  illustrious  exceptions, 
they  have  founded  no  families.  As  ancestors,  they 
are  concealed  ;  no  one  claims  them.  People  do  not 
readily  acknowledge  fathers  from  whom  they  can- 
not take  pattern.  Above  all,  I  do  not  like  to  have 
statues  erected  to  them.  What  a  mistake  !  What 
a  want  of  taste  !  Those  men  were  not  great !  they 
were  the  artisans  of  a  great  hour.  They  must  not 
be  set  up  for  imitation  ;  those  who  should  imitate 
them  would  be  villains.  We  love  them  on  condi- 
tion that  they  shall  be  the  last  of  their  school. 
They  succeeded  in  an  incredible  wager,  against  all 
probability.  Where  they  found  glory,  their  belated 
pupils  would  reap  only  ruin,  disaster,  malediction. 

No  one  is  to  blame  for  centenaries  ;  we  cannot 
prevent  the  centuries  from  attaining  their  hun- 
dredth year.  It  is  very  annoying,  nevertheless. 
Nothing  is  more  unhealthy  than  to  rhyme  the  life 


1 82        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

of  the  present  day  upon  the  past,  when  the  past  is 
exceptional.  Centenaries  invoke  apotheosis  ;  that 
is  too  much.  A  solemn,  general  absolution,  with 
panegyrics,  nothing  could  be  better  ;  an  embalm- 
ment, where  the  corpse  is  swathed  in  bands  so  that 
it  cannot  be  resuscitated,  would  also  give  us  infinite 
pleasure;  let  us,  at  least,  restrain  ourselves  from 
everything  which  may  lead  people  to  think  that 
such  acts  of  juvenile  imprudence  and  grandiose 
heedlessness  can  be  repeated.  It  is  the  glory  of 
a  nation  that  it  has  in  its  history  some  of  the  tre- 
mendous apparitions  which  come  only  once  : 
Jeanne  d'Arc,  Louis  XIV.,  the  Revolution,  Napo- 
leon ;  but  it  is  also  a  danger.  The  essence  of  these 
apparitions  is  that  they  shall  be  unique.  They  are 
beautiful  on  condition  that  they  are  not  renewed. 
The  Revolution  must  remain  an  attack  of  sacred 
malady,  as  the  ancients  said.  Fever  may  prove 
fruitful,  when  it  is  the  indication  of  inward  labor; 
but  it  must  not  continue  or  repeat  itself  ;  in  that 
case,  it  is  death.  The  Revolution  is  condemned,  if 
it  is  proved  that  at  the  end  of  a  hundred  years  it  is 
all  to  be  done  over  again,  that  it  has  to  seek  its 
path,  and  struggle  unceasingly  in  conspiracies  and 
anarchy. 

You  are  young  ;  you  will  behold  the  solution  of 
this  enigma,  sir.  Were  the  extraordinary  men  in 
whom  we  take  a  passionate  interest  right,  or  were 
they  wrong?  What  remains  of  that  unprecedented 
intoxication,  reduced  to  the  exact  balance  of  profit 


ERNEST  KENAN.  183 

and  loss  ?  Will  it  be  the  fate  of  these  great  enthus- 
iasts to  remain  eternally  isolated,  suspended  in  the 
void,  victims  of  a  noble  folly  ?  Or  have  they,  on  the 
whole,  founded  something  and  prepared  the  future  ? 
We  do  not  know  as  yet.  I  think  that  we  shall  know 
in  a  few  years.  If,  in  ten  or  twenty  years,  France 
is  prosperous  and  free,  faithful  to  legality,  sur- 
rounded by  the  sympathy  of  the  liberal  portions  of 
the  world,  oh  !  then  the  cause  of  the  Revolution  is 
saved  ;  the  world  will  love  it  and  enjoy  its  fruits, 
without  having  tasted  its  bitterness.  But  if,  in  ten 
or  twenty  years,  France  is  still  in  a  state  of  crisis, 
annihilated  abroad,  delivered  over  to  the  menaces 
of  sects  and  the  enterprises  of  vulgar  popularity  at 
home,  oh  !  then  it  must  be  pronounced  that  our 
artistic  enthusiasm  has  led  us  to  commit  a  political 
fault,  that  those  audacious  innovators,  for  whom  we 
have  cherished  a  weakness,  were  absolutely  in  the 
wrong.  In  that  case,  the  Revolution  would  be 
vanquished  for  more  than  a  century.  In  war,  a 
captain  who  is  always  beaten  cannot  be  a  great 
captain  ;  in  politics,  a  principle  which,  in  the  space 
of  a  hundred  years,  exhausts  a  nation,  cannot  be  a 
true  one. 

Let  us  suspend  our  judgment.  Our  sons  will 
have  the  reply  to  the  question  which  holds  us  in  a 
painful  uncertainty.  Certainly,  history  has  more 
than  once  shown  us  a  vanquished  cause  coming  to 
life  again  at  the  end  of  many  centuries,  with  the 
nation  which  had  perished  through  representing  it, 


184       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

the  victim  of  its  superiority  and  of  the  services 
rendered  by  it  to  the  common  work  of  humanity. 
But  our  abnegation  does  not  go  so  far  as  to  sacri- 
fice to  a  resurrection  and  to  hypothetical  apotheoses 
the  existence  of  our  dear  country.  The  true  way 
to  honor  the  generous  Utopias  of  the  past  is  to 
show  them  realized  and  applicable.  Who  can  say 
what  the  goal  of  humanity  is?  But,  whether  it  be 
a  question  of  humanity  or  of  nature,  the  only  or- 
ganisms which  leave  behind  a  durable  trace  are 
those  which,  conceived  in  sorrow,  grow  great  in 
strife,  accommodate  themselves  to  the  necessities 
of  their  surroundings,  and  resist  the  decisive  test 
of  life. 

You  will  aid  us,  sir,  in  defending  the  ancient 
house  of  our  fathers,  in  preserving  its  plan,  at  least, 
in  order  that  it  may  be  rebuilt  one  day.  You  will 
aid  us  in  maintaining  the  fundamental  idea  of  this 
company — the  principle  of  a  literary  nobility,  a 
conception  of  the  labor  of  the  mind  founded  on 
respect.  That,  it  is  said,  is  no  longer  an  attribute 
of  our  times.  How  many  things,  alas  !  has  our 
century  taken  up  again  which  it  at  first  rejected  ? 
I  fear  that  the  work  of  the  twentieth  century  will 
consist  only  in  picking  out  of  the  waste  basket  a 
multitude  of  excellent  ideas  which  the  nineteenth 

century  has  foolishly  consigned  to  it But  I 

do  not  wish  to  conclude  this  reunion  with  sad 
thoughts.  This  century,  which  proves  its  good- 
ness in  that  one  possesses  every  facility  for 
speaking  evil  of  it,  is,  after  all,  that  in  which 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  185 

it  has  been  the  pleasantest  to  live.  We  have 
enjoyed  the  best  that  exists.  If  its  close  some- 
times inspires  us  with  anxiety,  let  us  soar  to 
that  serene  region  where  we  can  say  to  our- 
selves, without  too  many  objections,  "God  does 
well  that  which  he  does."  These  armchairs  are, 
after  all,  very  comfortable  places  in  which  to  await 
death  patiently  ;  life  in  them  is  fairly  sweet.  Let 
us  enjoy  what  is  still  granted  us.  We  have  had 
our  five  acts,  and,  as  Marcus  Aurelius  says  :  "  He 
who  dismisses  us  is  without  wrath."  The  ancients 
felt  a  sort  of  religious  respect  in  the  presence  of 
the  spectacle  of  a  happy  life.  Yours,  sir,  appears 
to  me  to  have  been  of  this  sort.  Everything  has 
smiled  on  you,  and,  without  any  sacrifice  of  your 
sincerity,  you  have  contrived  to  unite,  in  common 
sympathy,  the  most  opposite  parties — the  sym- 
pathies which  are  the  least  accustomed  to  find 
themselves  together.  This  you  owe  to  your  happy 
genius  ;  you  owe  it,  also,  to  this  gentle  age  of  iron, 
to  this  excellent  country  in  which  we  have  the  hap- 
piness to  live,  Our  century  has  been  good  to  us. 
sir.  It  has  found  in  us  that  which  it  loves — pos- 
sibly some  of  its  defects.  I  do  not  know  whether, 
in  any  other  epoch,  in  any  other  country,  we  should 
have  been  able  to  put  to  so  much  profit  the  talent 
which  has  been  confided  to  us.  Poor  country  !  It 
is  because  we  love  it  that  we  are  sometimes  a  little 
harsh  toward  it.  You  were  quite  right  in  saying 
that  it  will  always  be  the  principle  of  our  hopes  and 
of  our  joys  ! 


1 86       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

LECTURE  BEFORE  THE  ALLIANCE  FOR  THE 
PROPAGATION  OF  THE  FRENCH  LAN- 
GUAGE, FEBRUARY  2,  1 888. 

Ladies  and  Gentlemen:  When  I  received,  a  few 
days  ago,  the  visit  of  the  young  and  amiable  depu- 
ties who  came  to  invite  me  to  take  part  in  this  fes- 
tival, I  felt  great  hesitation.  This  association  is 
certainly  one  of  the  works  to  which  I  am  most  de- 
voted. On  the  other  hand,  I  had  imposed  upon 
myself  this  winter  the  absolute  rule  not  to  deliver 
any  more  lectures.  Old  age,  which  has  so  many 
ways  of  making  itself  felt,  has  chosen  to  try  me  at 
this  moment  by  a  great  weakness  of  voice.  I 
wished  to  refuse  ;  then  I  thought  of  the  extreme 
joy  which  I  should  feel  at  finding  myself  once 
more  in  the  presence  of  a  young  and  sympathetic 
audience ;  I  accepted.  You  will  be  indulgent, 
ladies  and  gentlemen.  It  will  be  the  last  time,  I 
assure  you,  that  I  shall  commit  the  error  of  speak- 
ing in  places  so  disproportioned  to  my  present 
powers.  Moreover,  I  shall  be  brief.  I  should  like 
merely  to  exchange  a  few  thoughts  with  you  in 
regard  to  our  dear  French  language;  on  its  benefits, 
on  the  struggles  which  it  is  undergoing,  on  the 
efforts  which  these  gentlemen  are  making,  with 
such  disinterested  zeal,  to  assure  it  a  future. 

Yes,  this  is  an  excellent  work,  ladies  and  gentle- 
men. I  have  always  adhered  to  it  with  fervor.  I 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  187 

defend  it  from  the  bottom  of  my  heart.  This  work 
is  good,  in  the  first  place,  for  our  dear  country, 
which  we  should  luve  all  the  more,  in  proportion 
as  it  is  lacerated,  as  it  is  misunderstood.  It  is  good 
also  for  humanity.  The  preservation,  the  propa- 
gation of  the  French  tongue  are  of  importance  to 
the  general  order  of  civilization.  Some  essential 
thing  will  be  lacking  to  the  world  on  the  day  when 
this  great  torch,  clear  and  sparkling,  shall  cease  to 
shine.  Humanity  would  be  lessened  if  this  mar- 
velous instrument  of  civilization  were  to  disappear 
or  to  be  diminished. 

How  many  eternally  good  and  true  things  have 
been  first  uttered  in  French,  ladies  and  gentlemen, 
have  been  coined  in  French,  have  made  their  ap- 
pearance in  the  world  in  French  !  How  many 
liberal  and  just  ideas  have  first  found  their  for- 
mula, their  veritable  definition  in  French  !  How 
many  good  and  beautiful  things  our  language  has 
said  from  its  infant  lispings  in  the  twelfth  century 
down  to  our  own  days  !  The  abolition  of  slavery, 
the  rights  of  man,  equality,  liberty,  were  proclaimed 
for  the  first  time  in  French  !  It  is  in  England,  but 
in  the  French  tongue  that  there  bursts  forth,  in  the 
the  twelfth  century,  this  first  appeal  to  equality,  in 
the  mouth  of  the  peasants  : 

We  are  men  as  they  Nous  sommes  hommes 

are  :  comme  il  sont  : 

We  have  all  the  mem-  Tous  membres  avons 

bers  they  have,  comme  ils  ont, 


1 88       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

And  \ve  have  as  great  a  Et  tout  aussi  grand  corps 

body,  avons, 

And    we   can   suffer    as  Et  tout  autant   souffrir 

much  ;  pouvons  ; 

We  lack   only  force   of  Ne  nous  faut  fors  coeur 

heart.  seulement. 

It  is  rather  brutal  ;  equality  is  so  sometimes. 
But  would  you  have  an  expression  of  liberty  less 
haughty  ?  This  is  the  way  in  which  the  king  of 
France  expresses  himself  in  1315.  It  was  written 
in  Latin,  but  assuredly  thought  in  French.  "  As, 
according  to  the  law  of  nature,  every  man  should 
be  born  free  [Franc].  .  .  ;  we,  considering  that 
our  realm  is  called  and  named  the  kingdom  of  the 
Francs,  and  wishing  that  the  thing  should  agree 
with  the  name,  have  ordained  and  do  ordain, 
etc."  It  appears  that  the  fiscal  laws  had  a  good 
deal  to  do  with  what  followed  ;  but  never  mind, 
fhe  principle  was  a  good  one  to  utter,  and  it  was 
well  uttered. 

Here  now,  is  a  bishop,  privy  councilor  of 
Charles  V.,  about  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth 
century,  pronouncing  the  prelude  to  1789  :  "Now 
the  very  noble  line  of  the  kings  of  France  does  not 
learn  to  tyrannize,  and  thus  the  Gallican  people 
do  not  become  accustomed  to  servile  subjection, 
and  hence,  if  the  noble  royal  line  of  France  departs 
from  its  first  virtue,  there  is  no  doubt  that  it  will 
lose  its  kingdom,  and  this  will  be  translated  into 
other  hands." 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  189 

That  is  tolerably  swaggering,  is  it  not  ?  He 
was  a  Bishop  of  Lizieux ;  he  might  have  been 
Bishop  of  Autun  and  celebrated,  at  another  epoch, 
in  the  Champs-de-Mars,  the  mass  of  Liberty  on 
the  altar  of  country. 

I  should  never  make  an  end,  ladies  and  gentle- 
men, were  I  to  enumerate  to  you,  century  by 
century,  all  the  phrases  useful  to  humanity  which 
have  blossomed  in  our  dear  language.  It  is  a 
truly  liberal  language.  It  has  been  good  to  the 
weak,  the  poor,  let  us  add,  to  the  intelligent  man, 
to  the  witty  man. 

Everything  may  be  abused,  ladies  and  gentle- 
men. The  most  noble  banners  may  be  dragged 
through  the  mud.  But  the  worst  error  that  one 
can  commit  is  to  repulse  truths,  because  they 
have  been  abused  or  because  they  have  become 
commonplace.  Commonplace  !  .  .  .  that  means 
that  they  are  true  ;  the  greatest  praise  which  an 
idea  can  have  is  that  it  has  become  commonplace. 
Liberty,  Equality,  Fraternity.  That  is  French, 
and  that  will  make  the  circuit  of  the  earth.  An 
Oriental  of  my  acquaintance  almost  brought  about 
a  revolution  in  certain  parts  of  Persia  with  those 
three  words.  Some  doctors  of  Kerbela  decided 
that  they  were  more  beautiful  than  the  Koran,  and 
that  there  must  have  been  a  divine  revelation  in 
order  that  those  words  might  be  discovered.  A 
charming  traveling  companion  whom  I  had  in 
Syria — allow  me  to  name  him  :  it  was  M.  Lock- 


19°       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

roy — reaped  unprecedented  success  of  all  sorts,  in 
Lebanon,  especially  when  he  sung  the  "  Mar- 
seillaise." Those  fine  people  comprehended  it 
instinctively.  Everywhere  that  the  French  lan- 
guage goes,  gentlemen,  the  Revolution  will  ride 
behind  it.  I  know  that  one  must  not  have  too 
much  of  the  Revolution  ;  but  there  are  a  great 
many  countries  in  the  world  where  certain  doses 
of  it  would  still  do  good.  Let  us  not  force  it  ; 
but  let  us  allow  liberty  of  action  to  our  little 
clarion,  which  becomes,  at  certain  times,  we  know 
not  well  how,  the  trumpet  of  Jericho. 

I  say  that  French  has  been  a  beneficent  lan- 
guage to  humanity.  It  has  also  been  an  amiable 
language.  Oh,  what  sweet  things  have  been 
said  in  French  !  There  is  no  language  from  which 
one  can  detach  prettier  phrases.  What  fine  and 
exquisite  sentiments  have  found  their  expression 
in  the  harmonious  idiom  whose  utterance  Brunette 
Latini  already  considered  so  delectable  in  the  thir- 
teenth century  !  The  question  has  been  asked — in 
what  language  was  the  Lancelot  which  Francesca  da 
Rimini  read  ;  for  my  part,  I  have  no  doubt  on  that 
point ;  it  was  in  French.  My  learned  colleagues, 
M.  Gaston  Paris  and  M.  Paul  Meyer,  will  correct 
me  if  I  am  wrong. 

And  what  will  this  language,  which  has  already 
said  so  many  charming  things,  say  in  the  future  ? 
One  must  be  a  prophet  to  know  that.  It  will 
say  tolerably  diverse,  but  always  liberal  things. 


ERNEST  KENAN.  19! 

French,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  will  never  be  the 
language  of  the  absurd,  neither  will  it  ever  be  a 
reactionary  language.  I  cannot  imagine  a  serious 
reaction  having  for  organ  the  French  tongue. 
This  good  Gal  Mean  people,  as  Oresmus  says,  will 
never  entangle  itself  very  deeply  in  that  quarter. 
Look  at  M.  de  Maistre,  M.  Chateaubriand  ;  oh, 
such  inquisitors  would  not  alarm  me  much  !  And 
M.  de  Montalembert !  ....  A  matter  for  laugh- 
ter !  M.  de  Falloux  !  ....  A  little  more  serious. 
The  question  is  to  know  whether  the  reactionary 
has  wit.  If  he  has,  he  halts  very  promptly.  I 
fear  only  the  reactionary  without  wit  ;  but  that 
man  does  not  speak  French  ;  we  need  not  occupy 
ourselves  with  him. 

A  fact  which  is,  with  justice,  regarded  as  very 
significant,  is  the  general  sentiment  of  retrograde 
parties,  throughout  the  whole  world,  for  French. 
They  are  afraid  of  it  ;  they  barricade  themselves 
against  it.  One  would  say  that  this  language 
carries  the  pest  with  it — the  pest  according  to  the 
reactionaries,  of  course.  Proceed,  proceed,  never- 
theless. Poor  France  !  her  hour  will  come  yet. 
Who  knows  whether  the  propositions  of  peace  and 
of  liberty  which  shall  withdraw  Europe  from  the 
frightful  state  of  hatred  and  of  military  prepara- 
tions in  which  she  lies,  will  not  be  formulated  in 
French  ? 

That  is  why  French  may  really  be  called  a  classic 
language,  an  instrument  of  culture  and  of  civili- 


192        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

zation  for  all.  This  language  improves  ;  it  is  a 
school  ;  it  has  naturalness,  good  nature,  it  knows 
how  to  laugh,  it  carries  with  it  an  amiable  skepti- 
cism, mingled  with  kindness — skepticism  without 
kindness  is  a  very  bad  thing.  Fanaticism  is  im- 
possible in  French.  I  have  a  horror  of  fanaticism, 
especially  of  Mussulman  fanaticism ;  well !  this 
great  scourge  will  cease  through  French.  No 
Mussulman  who  knows  French  will  ever  be  a  dan- 
gerous Mussulman.  It  is  an  excellent  language  in 
which  to  doubt  ;  now,  in  the  future,  doubt  will, 
perhaps,  be  a  very  necessary  thing.  Can  you  im- 
agine Montaigne,  Pascal,  Moliere,  Voltaire,  other- 
wise than  in  French  ?  Ah  !  ladies  and  gentlemen, 
what  joy  will  leave  the  world  on  the  day  when 
French  leaves  it  !  Preserve  it,  preserve  it.  By 
the  side  of  the  fanatic  races,  there  are  melancholy 
races.  Teach  them  also  French.  I  am  thinking 
now,  in  particular,  of  our  unhappy  brothers,  the 
Slavs.  They  have  suffered  so  much  for  centuries, 
that  they  must  be  kept,  above  all  things,  from 
loving  nothingness.  The  French  language  and 
French  wine  will  have  a  humanitarian  role  to  play 
there.  French  rejoices  ;  its  favorite  locutions 
imply  a  gay  sentiment  of  life,  the  idea,  that,  at 
bottom,  nothing  is  very  serious,  and  that  one  enters 
into  the  intentions  of  the  Eternal  by  a  little  irony. 
The  great  inferiority  of  the  barbarian — of  the 
Oriental,  in  particular — is  that  he  does  not  know 
how  to  laugh.  Teach  all  nations  to  laugh  in 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  1 93 

French.  That  is  the  most  philosophical  thing  in 
the  world,  and  the  healthiest.  French  songs  are 
good  also.  In  former  days  I  calumniated  the  god  of 
the  minstrels  ;  heavens  !  how  wrong  I  was  !  He  is 
a  god  who  is  never  malicious,  who  has  never  done 
any  evil.  Who  is  it  that  said  that  God  takes  more 
pleasure  in  the  oaths  of  a  French  soldier  than  in 
the  prayers  of  such  and  such  a  Puritan  sect  ?  One 
enters,  through  gayety,  into  the  profoundest  views 
of  Providence.  It  is  good  policy  to  labor  to  render 
man  content.  It  is  the  only  means  of  preventing 
his  being  very]  wicked. 

Our  Gallic  race  has  always  possessed  an  im- 
mense superiority  in  this  respect.  I  often  reflect 
that,  during  that  somber  first  half  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  when  all  joy  of  the  real  seemed  lost,  the 
Burgundian  or  Aquitanian  peasant  continued  to 
drink  his  wine  and  to  sing  his  joyous  melodies, 
without  troubling  himself  over  the  grand,  supernat- 
ural dream  which  bewitched  the  rest  of  the  world. 

He  did  not  contradict  the  universal  be- 
lief ;  but  he  did  not  allow  himself  to  be  over- 
whelmed by  it.  What  I  love  most  in  Gregory  of 
Tours  is  the  narrative  of  the  manner  in  which  the 
bourgeois  of  Orleans  induced  Gontran  to  come 
and  taste  with  them  the  sweetness  of  city  life.  At 
the  end  of  a  few  days,  Gontran  found  that  this 
manner  of  life  was  far  superior  to  the  profound 
melancholy  of  a  barbarian's  life.  That  good  Cari- 
bert,  King  of  Paris,  was  caught  in  the  same  way. 


194       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

He  died  young  through  having  loved  too  much  the 
Parisian  women  of  his  day.  Our  language,  our 
customs,  our  wines,  our  songs,  have  always  exer- 
cised in  the  world  an  apostleship  of  good  humor 
and  humanity. 

You  have  been  all  the  more  in  right,  gentlemen, 
in  constituting  yourselves  the  defenders  of  our 
dear  language,  since  it  has  always  defended  itself 
very  badly.  It  has  always  been  one  of  the  glories 
of  France,  that  she  has  never  done  violence  to  the 
linguistic  conscience  of  anyone.  She  has  never 
taken  any  coercive  measures  in  the  matter  of 
languages.  Language  is  a  religion,  in  its  own  way. 
To  persecute  a  person  for  his  language  is  as  bad 
as  to  persecute  him  for  his  religion.  As  it  often 
happens,  we  have  been  punished  for  our  delicacy. 
A  wind,  so  little  liberal  in  its  nature,  has  blpwn 
over  the  world  that  that  which  men  should  have 
praised  has  almost  been  converted  into  an  argu- 
ment against  us.  They  have  taken  from  us  with 
less  scruple  a  country,  "  which,"  they  said,  "  we 
have  not  understood  how  to  assimilate."  What 
would  you  have  ?  The  world  loves  the  strong. 
Let  us  allow  it  to  take  its  course  ;  then  it  will  soon 
change  its  fashion.  Let  us  wait  :  we  shall  soon 
find  that  we  were  in  the  right.  I  have  always  re- 
garded as  very  beautiful  the  reply  of  Abraham  to 
his  ally,  the  King  of  Sodom  :  Da  mihi  atiiwas  ; 
cxtera  lolle  tibi — Give  me  the  souls  ;  take  thou  the 
rest! 


ERNEST  REA'Atf.  195 

The  souls  have  remained  faithful  to  us,  gentle- 
men. But  sympathetic  propaganda  is  permitted 
to  us  in  exactly  the  same  proportion  that  brutal 
propaganda  is  forbidden  to  us.  Your  schools 
are  a  gratuitous  gift,  which  forces  no  one.  You 
offer  something  excellent  ;  each  person  is  free 
to  accept  or  reject.  You  obtain  your  results  by 
purely  pacific  means.  The  perusal  of  your  Bulle- 
tins is  delicious  and  touching.  What  youth,  what 
devotion  !  What  courage  in  your  schoolmasters 
and  mistresses  !  I  love  those  old  Canadians  who 
travel  a  hundred  leagues  on  horseback,  to  hear 
French  spoken.  I  love  those  religious  heroes 
who  maintain,  in  the  midst  of  barbarous  lands,  a 
tradition  of  honesty,  of  uprightness,  of  cordiality. 
Thanks  to  your  excellent  proceedings  people  will 
not  only  learn  French,  but  they  will  love  it.  For 
those  poor,  disinherited  races,  all  good  things  have 
come  with  it.  It  will  have  been  the  bearer  of  all 
good  news,  liberty,  contentment,  the  joy  of  living. 
Let  all  refer  the  commencement  of  all  their  joys  to 
the  day  when  they  learned  French. 

And  let  not  the  objection  be  raised  that  French 
is  an  aristocratic  language,  of  a  culture  too  refined 
for  the  barbarian,  lace  rather  than  homespun. 
Oh  !  it  matters  not,  gentlemen.  I  will  even  say  : 
so  much  the  better.  Popular  things  are,  almost 
always,  very  aristocratic  things.  One  must  never 
serve  the  people  with  anything  that  is  not  very 
noble.  Latin,  the  language  which  has  conquered 


I96       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

most  barbarians,  is  the  infinitely  delicate  lan- 
guage of  poets,  almost  of  decadents,  as  it  is  ex- 
pressed to-day.  In  the  matter  of  a  language,  num- 
ber is  necessary ;  everything  counts.  In  order 
that  some  may  speak  well  it  is  necessary  that 
some  should  speak  ill.  L(  ng  life  to  the  barba- 
rians, gentlemen  !  It  is  through  them  that  we  live 
and  continue. 

With  a  profound  intuition  of  history,  you  have 
perceived  all  this.  The  barbarian  belongs  to  the 
first  person  who  captures  him.  The  seed  which 
you  are  sowing  will  bear  fruit  for  centuries. 
Thanks,  in  the  name  of  France,  gentlemen.  Thanks 
in  the  name  of  us  writers,  who  will,  perhaps,  be 
indebted  to  you  that  some  page  of  our  books, 
which  has,  by  chance,  escaped  destruction,  will  be 
read  by  the  erudite  a  thousand  years  hence. 
Thanks  in  the  name  of  the  French  Academy,  to 
whom  you  will  give  the  means  of  finishing  its 
historical  Dictionary  ;  twelve  hundred  years  are 
required  for  that,  according  to  the  most  moderate 
computation  ;  we  owe  them  to  you.  Thanks  for 
all  the  world.  Hold,  gentlemen,  there  is  one  day, 
when  the  use  of  French  will  be  very  necessary  ;  it 
is  the  day  of  the  Valley  of  Jehoshaphat.  Prolong 
the  life  of  French  until  the  Last  Judgment.  I  as- 
sure you  that,  if  German  is  spoken  on  that  day, 
there  will  be  errors  and  confusion  without  number. 
All  the  discoveries,  for  example,  will  turn  out  to 
have  been  made  by  the  Germans.  Gentlemen,  I 


ERXEST  REN  AN.  197 

beg  of  you,  arrange  it  so  that  German  shall  not  be 
spoken  in  the  Valley  of  Jehoshaphat. 

My  learned  colleague,  M.  Gaston  Paris,  com- 
municated to  me  yesterday,  on  this  subject,  a  pas- 
sage from  a  poet  of  Champagne  of  the  twelfth  cent- 
ury, which  ought  to  reassure  us.  According  to 
this  author,  French  is  the  language  of  God  himself: 

C'est  ci  1  que  Dieu  s'entent  ar^ois, 
Qu'il  le  fist  et  bel  et  legier. 

'Tis  that  which  God  understands  himself, 
He  made  it  beautiful  and  light. 

This,  certainly  is  a  fine  privilege.  For  my  part, 
gentlemen,  I  make  a  great  point  of  your  confirm- 
ing it  ;  I  will  tell  you  why.  You  listen  to  me 
with  so  much  favor,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  that  I 
will  confide  to  you  a  dream  in  which  I  often  in- 
dulge. I  receive  so  many  letters  which  announce 
to  me  my  eternal  damnation  that  I  have  finally 
come  to  a  conclusion  about  it.  It  will  not  be  very 
just  ;  but  I  much  prefer  hell,  after  all,  to  annihila- 
tion. I  am  persuaded  that  I  shall  succeed  in  put- 
ting the  situation  to  good  use,  and  I  think  that,  if  I 
have  only  the  good  God  to  deal  with,  I  shall  manage 
to  touch  him.  There  are  theologians  who  concede 
a  mitigation  in  the  pains  of  the  damned.  Well,  in 
my  sleepless  nights,  I  amuse  myself  by  composing 
petitions,  which  I  suppose  addressed  to'the  Eternal 
from  the  remotest  depths  of  hell.  I  almost  al \vays 
try  to  prove  to  him  that  he  is  a  little  the  cause  of 


I98       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

our  perdition,  and  that  there  are  things  which  he 
should  have  made  clearer.  Among  these  petitions 
there  are  some  tolerably  piquant  specimens,  which 
would  make  the  Eternal  smile,  I  think.  But  it  is 
plain  that  they 'will  lose  all  their  salt  if  I  am 
obliged  to  translate  them  into  German.  Preserve 
me  from  that  misfortune,  gentlemen.  I  depend  on 
you  to  make  French  the  language  of  eternal  life. 
Otherwise,  I  shall  be  lost. 

Pardon  me,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  for  having  in- 
terrupted your  pleasures  with  such  black  thoughts. 
Let  me  thank  you  for  the  extreme  joy  which  you 
have  given  me  by  your  sympathetic  attention,  and 
your  cordial  welcome. 


SPEECH  DELIVERED  AT  MONTMORENCY,  ON 
THE  OCCASION  OF  THE  REMOVAL  OF  THE 
ASHES  OF  MICKIEWICZ,  JUNE  2Q,  1890. 

Gentlemen :  The  College  of  France  thanks  you 
for  having  been  so  good  as  to  associate  me  with 
your  noble  thought  to  return  to  his  native  land  the 
remains  of  an  eminent  man  whom  Poland  had  lent 
to  us,  and  whom  she  takes  back  to-day ;  that  is 
justice.  Our  college,  founded  to  interrogate 
nature,  and  to  explain,  by  languages  and  literatures, 
the  free  genius  of  peoples,  is  like  a  common  land 
for  souls,  where  all  meet.  Bodies  do  not  belong 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  199 

to  us.  Take  then,  these  remains,  which  genius 
illuminated.  Adam  Mickiewicz  does  not  quit  us 
entirely.  We  shall  have  his  spirit,  his  memory. 
Our  ancient  halls  will  preserve  the  distant  echo  of 
his  voice.  Some  survivors  of  those  heroic  times 
can  still  tell  us  how  much  intoxication,  magic, 
enchanting  power,  his  words  possessed.  Asso- 
ciated in  a  glorious  trinity  with  two  other  names 
which  are  dear  to  us — those  of  Michelet  and 
Quinet — the  name  of  Mickiewicz  has  become  for 
us  a  creed,  an  inseparable  part  of  our  ancient 
glories  and  our  ancient  joys. 

This  is  because  your  compatriot,  gentlemen,  had 
the  capital  quality  by  which  a  man  dominates  his 
century — sincerity,  personal  enthusiasm,  absence 
of  self-love,  creating  a  state  of  soul  in  which  he 
does  not  do,  or  does  not  say,  or  does  not  write 
that  which  he  wishes,  but  in  which  he  does, 
says,  or  writes  that  which  is  dictated  to  him 
by  a  genius  placed  outside  of  him.  This  genius 
is,  almost  always,  the  century,  eternally  ill,  which 
desires  that  its  wounds  shall  be  caressed  ;  that  its 
fever  shall  be  calmed  with  sonorous  words.  It 
is  far  more,  even,  the  race,  the  interior  voice  of  an- 
cestors and  the  man's  blood.  Mickiewicz  had  these 
two  great  sources  of  inspiration.  When  Madame 
Sand,  like  a  true  sister,  comprehended  his  genius  at 
the  first  word,  she  perceived  that  that  heart  had  felt 
all  our  wounds  ;  that  our  convulsions  had  made  it 
palpitate.  The  glory  of  our  century  lies  in  having 


200       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

wished  to  realize  the  impossible ;  to  solve  the 
insoluble.  Glory  to  it !  The  men  of  action  who 
shall  attempt  to  realize  the  immensity  of  these 
programmes  will  all  be  impotent  ;  the  men  of 
reason  will  end  only  in  contradictions.  The  poet 
who  never  doubts,  who  after  each  defeat  sets  to  work 
more  ardently  and  more  vigorously  than  ever,  is 
never  confounded.  Such  was  Mickiewicz.  He 
possessed  within  himself  sources  of  infinite 
resurrections.  He  endured  the  most  cruel 
anguishes,  but  never  that  of  despair  ;  his  imper- 
turbable faith  in  the  future  sprang  from  a  sort  of 
profound  instinct — from  something  which  is  in  us, 
and  which  speaks  to  us  more  loudly  than  the  sad 
reality.  I  mean  the  spirit  of  the  past,  solidarity 
with  that  which  does  not  die.  The  cheerful  men 
are  those  in  whom  is  thus  an  incarnated  form  of  the 
universal  conscience,  who  accomplish  their  human 
destiny  as  the  ant  toils,  as  the  bee  makes  its 
honey. 

Sprung  from  that  family  of  the  Aryan  race  which 
has  been  most  conservative  of  primitive  gifts — 
from  that  Lithuania  which,  by  its  language,  its 
serenity,  its  moral  seriousness,  represents  best  to 
us  our  grave  and  honest  ancestors — Mickiewicz 
was  related  to  the  ancient  centuries  by  bonds  of 
secret  communication  which  made  of  him  a  seer 
into  the  past.  And  he  was,  at  the  same  time,  a  seer 
into  the  future.  He  believed  in  his  race  ;  but  he 
believed,  above  all,  in  the  divine  spirit  which  ani- 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  20 1 

mates  ail  that  which  bears  within  it  the  breath  of 
life,  and,  athwart  all  clouds,  he  beheld  a  brilliant 
future  in  which  poor  humanity  should  receive  con- 
solation for  its  sufferings.  This  great  idealist  was 
a  great  patriot,  but  he  was,  above  all,  a  believer. 
And  as  the  real  reason  for  belief  in  immortality  is 
furnished  by  the  martyrs,  his  prophetic  imagina- 
tion, inspired  by  the  beating  of  his  own  heart, 
persuaded  him  that  it  is  not  in  vain  that  humanity 
has  toiled  so  much,  and  that  its  victims  have  suf- 
fered so  much. 

This  is  why  enlightened  French  society  welcomed 
so  gladly  this  great  and  noble  spirit,  associated 
him  with  all  that  it  held  dearest,  made  him  spon- 
taneously, and  almost  without  consulting  him, 
member  of  a  triumvirate  for  liberty  and  against 
religion  badly  understood.  On  the  day  when  the 
Slavic  genius  had  conquered  its  place  among  the 
national  geniuses  which  are  studied  in  a  scientific 
manner,  and  when  the  creation  of  a  professorship 
of  Slavic  languages  and  literatures  was  decided 
upon,  a  highly  liberal  thought  occurred  to  those 
who  then  directed  the  intellectual  affairs  of  France, 
and  this  was  to  charge  Mickiewicz  with  this 
instruction.  The  poet,  the  man  who  represents 
the  soul  of  a  people,  who  possesses  its  legends,  who 
has  the  intuition  of  its  origins,  appeared  preferable 
for  the  profound  analysis  of  a  race  to  the  learned 
man  of  the  study  who  works  only  with  books. 
They  were  right.  The  living  meadow,  with  its 


202        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

flowers,  is  superior  to  the  dried  herbarium,  which 
offers  only  a  pale  memory  of  life.  The  volumes 
containing  M.  Mickiewicz's  first  course  of  lectures, 
constitute  a  treasure  of  original  information  upon 
the  ancient  history  of  the  Slav  race,  which  the 
professor  explained  like  a  learned  man  and  felt 
like  a  man  of  the  people.  He  was  accused  of 
transgressing  his  programme.  Ah  !  how  difficult 
it  is  to  confine  one's  self  to  a  limited  programme 
when  one  is  intoxicated  with  the  infinite  !  Such  as 
he  was,  with  his  bold  divinations,  his  overflowing 
aspirations,  his  noble  illusions  of  a  prophet,  we  are 
proud  of  him,  and  although  the  decree  of  his 
official  election  was  deferred  through  scruples  of 
policy,  we  have  inscribed  his  name  on  the  tablets 
of  marble  which  contain  the  names  of  our  seniors. 
He  had  in  his  favor  the  best  of  decrees,  that  which 
is  countersigned  by  the  enthusiasm  of  the  people. 
You  are  about  to  transport  him  from  the  hospitable 
soil  where  he  has  reposed  for  five-and-thirty  years 
to  your  Saint  Denis,  in  the  vaults  of  Wawel,  where 
repose  your  ancient  sovereigns.  There  he  will  lie 
by  the  side  of  Kosciusko  and  Poniatowski,  the  only 
members  of  that  noble  assembly  who  were  not 
kings.  By  the  side  of  those  who  have  wielded  the 
sword  you  have  desired  to  prepare  a  place  for  the 
inspired  poet,  who  has  lent  a  voice  to  yours  trong 
and  ardent  genius,  to  your  exquisite  legends,  to  all 
which  transports  and  consoles  you,  which  makes  you 
smile  and  weep.  Thereby  you  give  a  great  lesson 
to  idealism  ;  you  proclaim  that  a  nation  is  a  spiritual 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  203 

thing,  that  it  possesses  a  soul  which  is  not  con- 
quered with  the  means  wherewith  the  body  is 
conquered. 

Great  and  illustrious  colleague,  remember 
France  ;  from  the  royal  tomb  which  the  admira- 
tion of  your  compatriots  has  prepared  for  you, 
remember  France.  Poor  France  !  She  does  not 
forget,  be  assured.  That  which  she  has  loved 
once  she  loves  forever.  That  which  she  has  ap- 
plauded in  your  words,  she  will  applaud  again. 
The  rostrum  which  she  has  offered  to  you,  she  will 
offer  again  more  freely.  You  would  hesitate  to 
recall  there  so  often  memories  of  victory,  but  you 
would  find  heartfelt  words  wherewith  to  teach  the 
austere  duties  of  the  vanquished.  Go  to  the  glory 
which  you  have  merited  ;  return  to  the  homage  of 
the  people,  to  that  country  which  you  have  loved 
so  much.  We  restrict  our  ambition  to  a  single 
point,  that  it  may  be  stated  on  your  tomb  that  you 
were  one  of  us;  that  people  may  know,  in  the 
Poland  of  the  future,  that,  in  the  days  of  trial, 
there  was  a  liberal  France  to  receive  you,  to 
applaud  you,  to  love  you. 


VICTOR    HUGO. 

M.  VICTOR  HUGO  was  one  of  the  proofs  of  the 
unity  of  our  French  conscience.  The  admiration 
which  surrounded  his  last  years  has  demonstrated 
tint  there  are  still  points  upon  which  we  are  in  ac- 


204       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

cord.  Without  distinction  of  classes,  of  parties,  of 
sects,  of  literary  opinions,  the  public,  for  the  last 
few  days,  has  hung  suspended  on  the  heartbreak- 
ing narrative  of  his  death-agony  ;  and  now  there  is 
no  one  who  does  not  feel  a  great  void  at  the  heart 
of  the  country.  He  was  an  essential  member  of 
the  Church  in  the  communion  of  which  we  live  ; 
one  would  say  that  the  spire  of  that  ancient  cathe- 
dral had  crumbled  with  that  noble  existence  which 
has  borne  the  highest,  in  our  century,  the  banner 
of  the  ideal. 

M.  Victor  Hugo  was  a  very  great  man  ;  he  was, 
above  all,  an  extraordinary  man,  a  unique  man. 
He  seems  to  have  been  created  by  a  special  nomi- 
nating decree  of  the  Eternal.  All  the  categories  of 
literary  history  were  thrown  into  confusion  in  him. 
That  criticism  which  shall,  one  day,  seek  to  disen- 
tangle his  origins,  will  find  itself  in  the  presence  of 
the  most  complicated  problem.  Was  he  French, 
German,  Spanish  ?  He  was  all  this  and  something 
more.  His  genius  is  above  all  distinctions  of  race  ; 
none  of  the  families  into  which  the  human  race  is 
divided,  physically  and  morally,  can  claim  him. 

Is  he  a  spiritualist  ?  Is  he  a  materialist  ?  I  do 
not  know.  On  the  one  hand,  he  does  not  know 
what  abstraction  is  ;  his  principal,  I  may  say  his 
sole,  cult,  is  for  two  or  three  enormous  realities, 
such  as  Paris,  Napoleon,  the  people.  On  souls,  he 
held  the  ideas  of  Tertullian  ;  he  thinks  he  sees 
them,  he  touches  them  ;  his  immortality  is  only  the 


ERNEST  RENAN.  205 

immortality  of  the  head.  He  is  highly  idealistic, 
withal.  For  him,  the  idea  penetrates  matter  and 
constitutes  its  reason  for  existence.  His  God  is 
not  the  hidden  God  of  Spinoza*  a  stranger  to  the 
development  of  the  universe  ;  he  is  a  God  to 
whom  it  may  be  useless  to  pray,  but  whom  he 
adored  with  a  sort  of  trembling.  He  is  the  Abyss 
of  the  Gnostics.  His  life  was  passed  under  the 
powerful  obsession  of  a  living  infinity,  which  em- 
braced him,  overflowed  upon  him  from  all  direc- 
tions, and  in  the  bosom  of  which  he  found  it 
sweet  to  lose  himself  and  enter  into  delirium. 

That  lofty  philosophy  which  was  the  daily  occu- 
pation of  the  long  hours  that  he  passed  alone  with 
himself  is  the  secret  of  his  genius.  For  him  the 
world  is  like  a  diamond  with  a  thousand  facets, 
sparkling  with  internal  fires,  suspended  in  a  night 
without  bounds.  He  desires  to  express  that  which 
he  sees  and  feels  ;  materially  he  cannot.  The  tran- 
quil state  of  the  poet's  soul,  which  believes  that  it 
holds  the  infinite,  or  which  easily  resigns  itself  to 
its  impotence,  is  not  his.  He  persists,  he  stammers, 
he  hardens  himself  against  the  impossible  ;  he  does 
not  consent  to  hold  his  peace  ;  like  the  Hebrew 
prophet,  he  likes  to  say :  Doming,  nescio  loqui 
— Lord,  I  know  not  how  to  speak.  His  prodig- 
ious reason  completes  what  his  imagination  does 
not  perceive.  Often  above  humanity,  he  is  some- 
times below  it.  Like  a  Cyclops,  hardly  disengaged 
from  matter,  he  possesses  the  secrets  of  a  lost 


206        RECOLLECTIOXS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

world.  His  immense  work  is  the  mirage  of  a  uni- 
verse which  no  eye  shall  behold  again. 

His  defects  were  thus  necessary  defects ;  he 
could  not  have  existed  without  them  ;  they  were 
the  defects  of  an  unconscious  force  of  nature,  act- 
ing through  the  effect  of  an  inward  tension.  He 
was  born  to  be  the  sonorous  clarion  which  throws 
down  walls  of  cities  which  have  waxed  old.  The 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  had  excelled 
in  a  limited  conception  of  the  human  mind.  The 
great  writers  of  those  epochs  wished  to  see  only 
the  finished  ;  things  appeared  to  them  in  their 
definitive  state,  they  never  beheld  them  in  the  proc- 
ess of  creation.  The  infinite  development  escaped 
them.  The  mysteries  of  origins,  the  wonders  of 
instinct,  the  genius  of  crowds,  spontaneity  under 
all  forms,  were  beyond  them.  At  the  beginning 
of  our  century  the  evil  had  reached  its  height. 
The  physical  contemplation  of  the  universe 
wrought  miracles  :  "  La  Me"chanique  Celeste  "  of 
Laplace,  and  "  La  Me"chanique  Analytique  "  of  La- 
grange,  composed  separately,  arrived  at  an  em- 
brace, like  two  hemispheres  combined  expressly  to 
be  united  !  But  the  moral  contemplation  of  the 
universe,  that  is  to  say,  literature,  had  become  a 
puerile  game — something  empty,  factitious,  scanty. 

M.  Victor  Hugp  was  the  most  illustrious  among 
those  who  undertook  to  lead  back  this  degraded 
literature  to  lofty  inspirations.  He  was  filled  with 
a  truly  poetical  breath  ;  with  him,  everything  is 


ERNEST  RENAN.  207 

germ  and  vigorous  with  life.  A  singular  discovery 
coincides  with  that  of  the  new  spirit  ;  it  is  that  the 
French  language,  which  might  seem  no  longer 
good  for  anything  but  to  rhyme  witty  or  amiable 
little  verses,  suddenly  finds  itself  vibrating, 
sonorous,  full  of  brilliancy.  The  poet,  who  has  just 
opened  to  imagination  and  sentiment  fresh  paths, 
reveals  to  French  poetry  its  harmony.  That  which 
was  only  a  great  bell  of  lead  becomes  in  his  hands 
a  fine,  small  bell  of  steel. 

The  battle  was  won.  Who,  to-day,  would  wish 
to  demand  of  the  general  an  account  of  the 
maneuvers  which  he  employed,  of  the  sacrifices 
which  were  the  conditions  of  success  ?  '  The  gen- 
eral is  obliged  to  be  an  egotist.  The  army  is  he  ; 
and  personality,  to  be  condemned  in  other  men,  is 
imposed  upon  him.  M.  Hugo  had  become  a  creed, 
a  principle,  an  affirmation — the  affirmation  of 
idealism  and  of  free  art.  He  owed  himself  to  his 
own  religion  ;  he  was  like  a  god  who  should  be,  at 
the  same  time,  a  priest  to  himself.  His  strong  and 
lofty  nature  lent  itself  to  such  a  part,  which  would 
have  been  (insupportable  for  any  other.  He  was 
the  least  free  of  men,  and  that  did  not  weigh  upon 
him.  A  great  instinct  made  its  way  to  the  light 
through  him.  He  was  like  a  spring  of  the  spiritual 
world.  He  had  not  the  time  to  have  taste,  and, 
moreover,  that  would  have  served  him  but  little. 
His  policy  must  be  that  which  best  suited  his 
battle.  It  was,  in  reality,  subordinated  to  his 


208        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

great  literary  strategies,  and  was  sometimes  forced 
to  suffer  from  them,  like  everything  of  the  first 
order  which  it  reduced  to  the  second  rank  and 
which  it  sacrificed  to  a  preferred  goal. 

In  proportion  as  he  advanced  in  life,  the  grand 
ideal  which  has  always  filled  him  was  expanded, 
purified.  He  was  more  and  more  seized  with  pity 
for  the  thousands  of  beings  whom  nature  immolates 
to  the  great  things  which  she  makes.  Eternal 
honor  of  our  race  !  Starting  from  the  two  opposite 
poles,  M.  Hugo  and  Voltaire  unite  in  the  love  of 
justice  and  of  humanity.  In  1878  ancient  literary 
antipathies  subsided  :  the  cold  tragedies  of  the 
eighteenth  Century  were  forgotten  ;  Victor  Hugo 
awarded  to  his  adversary  the  apotheosis,  certainly 
not  for  his  literary  baggage,  but  in  spite  of  his  lit- 
erary baggage.  Liberalism  is  the  national  work  of 
France  ;  one  is  judged,  in  history,  according  to  the 
measure  'of  services  .which  one  has  rendered  to  it. 

What  will  happen  in  1985  when  the  centenary  of 
M.  Victor  Hugo  will  be  celebrated  in  its  turn  ? 
Who  shall  dare  to  predict,  in  the  face  of  the. 
obscurities  of  a  future  which  appears  to  us  closed 
on  all  sides  ?  One  thing  alone  is  very  probable. 
That  which  has  remained  of  Voltaire  will  remain 
of  M.  Hugo.  Voltaire,  in  the  name  of  an  admi- 
rable good  sense,  proclaims  that  men  blaspheme 
God  when  they  think  to  serve  his  cause  by  preach- 
ing hatred.  M.  Hugo,  in  the  name  of  a  grandiose 
instinct,  proclaims  a  father  of  beings,  in  whom  all 
beings  are  brothers.  The  priests  will  be  absent 


ERNEST  RENAK.  209 

from  M.  Hugo's  funeral.  That  is  loyal ;  it  would 
have  been  better  had  matters  passed  off  with  the 
same  decorum  at  the  funeral  of  Voltaire.  For  my 
part,  had  I  the  right  to  wear  the  gown  and  band 
of  any  religion,  and  were  I  called  upon  to  pro- 
nounce the  last  farewell  to  the  dead,  this  is  what  I 
would  say,  as  I  poured  a  few  grains  of  incense 
upon  the  sacred  flames. 

"Brothers  and  sisters,  send  up  with  this  incense 
your  best  prayers,  in  memory  of  those  great  men 
whom  the  purified  manner  in  which  they  regarded 
divine  things  has  not  permitted  to  desire  ordinary 
songs  and  chants.  So  strong  an  ideal  filled  their 
soul  that  they  affirmed  the  immortality  of  the  ideal 
itself.  They  believed  so  energetically  in  the  true, 
in  the  good,  in  justice,  that  they  conceived  these 
apparent  abstractions  as  a  real  and  supreme  exist- 
ence. Their  language  on  this  point  was  that  of 
the  most  simple  among  you.  They  took  pleasure 
in  the  words  which  you  employ  ;  they  avoided  the 
mistake  of  many  subtle  minds  which,  in  order  not 
to  speak  like  the  credulous  centuries,  wear  them- 
selves out  in  seeking  synonyms  of  God." 


GEORGE  SAND. 

DURING  the  days  which  preceded  her  death, 
Madame  Sand  had  written  for  the  Temps,  in  rela- 
tion to  my  "  Philosophical  Dialogues,"  an  article 
which  the  director  of  the  Temps  was  so  kind  as  to 


2 1  o       RECOLLECTIONS  A ND  LE  TTEXS  OF 

communicate  to  me.     I  thanked  him  for  it  in  the 
following  letter  : 

PARIS,  June  n,  1876. 

My  Dear  Friend :  I  send  you  back,  not  without 
some  tears,  the  sheets  which  you  have  permitted 
me  to  read.  I  am  touched  to  the  bottom  of  my 
heart  at  having  been  the  last  to  cause  vibration  in 
that  sonorous  soul,  which  was  like  the  seolian  harp 
of  our  epoch.  Her  death  appears  to  me  a  loss  to 
humanity  ;  henceforth,  something  will  be  lacking  to 
our  concert  ;  a  cord  has  been  broken  in  the  lyre  of 
the  century.  She  possessed  the  divine  talent  of  be- 
stowing wings  on  everything,  of  making  art  with 
the  idea  which,  to  others,  remained  rough  and 
formless.  She  drew  charming  pages  from  people 
who  have  never  written  a  single  good  page  ;  for  an 
instrument  of  infinite  sensibility  lay  within  her  ; 
moved  by  everything  that  was  original  and  true, 
responding  by  the  wealth  of  her  inner  being  to  all 
impressions  from  without,  she  transformed  and 
rendered  everything  into  infinite  harmonies.  She 
gave  life  to  the  aspirations  of  those  who  felt  but 
who  could  not  create.  She  was  the  inspired  poet 
who  clothed  with  a  body  our  hopes,  our  plaints,  our 
faults,  our  groans. 

This  admirable  gift  of  understanding  and  ex- 
pressing everything  was  the  source  of  her  kindness. 
It  is  the  characteristic  of  great  souls  that  they  are 
incapable  of  hatred.  They  see  good  everywhere 
and  they  love  good  in  everything.  "I  had  no 


ERNEST  REX  AN.  21 1 

other  enemies  than  those  of  the  state,"  said  a  great 
man  in  politics.  We  have  no  other  enemies  than 
those  of  the  ideal  ;  now,  if  we  except  a  few  souls 
which  have  been  unfortunately  born,  the  ideal  has 
no  enemies  in  reality  ;  it  has  its  more  or  less  imper- 
fect adorers.  Madame  Sand  has  sometimes  been 
reproached  for  that  indulgence  which,  it  was  said, 
prevented  her  feeling  sufficient  indignation  against 
evil,  left  her  disarmed  in  the  presence  of  her 
enemies,  made  her  forget  quickly  outrage  and 
calumny.  It  was  because  she  had,  in  fact,  a  very 
different  work  to  do  from  occupying  her  mind  with 
such  petty  thoughts.  Hate  the  foolish — great 
Heavens  ! — reply  to  all  the  absurdities,  wear  out  her 
life  in  a  fruitless  struggle,  place  herself  at  the 
mercy  of  her  insulters  by  giving  them  the  right  to 
think  that  they  can  wound  her — what  madness, 
when  the  world  is  so  vast,  when  the  universe  con- 
tains so  many  secrets  to  be  divined,  so  many  charm- 
ing things  to  contemplate  !  Madame  Sand  had 
not  the  ordinary  defect  of  literary  people.  She 
knew  no  self-love.  Her  life,  passed,  in  spite  of 
appearances  to  the  contrary,  in  a  profound  peace, 
in  noble  disdain  of  plebeian  judgments,  was, 
throughout,  an  ardent  seeking  after  the  forms  under 
which  it  is  permitted  us  to  admire  the  infinite. 

She  took  no  precautions  against  pharisees.  She 
did  not  provoke  them,  but  she  never  thought  of 
them.  Her  candor,  her  artlessness  permitted  her 
to  indulge  in  miracles  of  disdain  and  of  admirable 


2 1 2        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LE  TTERS  OF 

serenity.  Yesterday,  an  hour  before  her  funeral, 
some  literary  reticences,  dominated  by  respect, 
could  be  expressed  among  those  whom  a  desire  to 
render  her  homage  had  assembled  in  her  park.  A 
nightingale  suddenly  began  to  sing  in  a  voice  so 
sweet  that  many  said  :  "  Ah  !  that  is  the  speech 
which  is  really  in  place  here  ;  her  eulogium  is  that 
which  flows  from  the  breast  swelling  with  the  love 
of  pure  and  simple  beings."  Her  funeral  was  what 
it  should  have  been.  She  reposes  in  the  corner  of 
a  rustic  cemetery,  beneath  a  fine  green  cypress. 
All  the  inhabitants  of  the  country  round  about 
were  present  ;  all  wept.  With  much  tact,  it  had 
been  felt  that  the  ideas  of  the  simple  women  who 
came  to  pray  for  her,  hooded,  chaplet  in  hand, 
must  not  be  troubled.  That  coffin,  covered  with 
flowers,  borne  by  peasants,  must  traverse  the 
church.  For  my  own  part,  I  should  have  regretted 
to  pass,  without  entering,  that  porch  sheltered  by 
great  trees  ;  I  should  have  regretted  the  absence 
of  trie  old  chanter  who  intoned  the  psalms  without 
understanding  them,  and  of  the  choir  boy  who 
carried  the  holy  water  with  an  air  of  abstraction 
Oh  !  what  a  fine  legend  will  be  built  thereon  b; 
the  people  and  the  Church,  those  eternal  creator  , 
of  myth,  more  true  than  the  truth  !  The  simple 
who  imagine  that  she  had  errors  to  retract,  will 
make  out  that  she  was  converted.  They  will 
not  be  able  to  make  up  their  minds  to  damn  so 
great  a  soul.  The  first  time  that  I  saw  a  portrait 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  213 

of  Madame  Sand,  was  in  Brittany,  in  the  year  1836 
or  1837  (I  was  fifteen  years  of  age)  ;  the  priests  ex- 
hibited it  with  horror  ;  it  was  a  lithograph  represent- 
ing a  tall  woman,  clad  in  black,  trampling  under 
foot  a  crucifix.  How  quickly  the  Church  pardons  ! 
In  ten  years  she  will  be  saved.  Thousands  more 
will  peruse  her,  saying,  to  excuse  their  hardihood  : 
"  It  is  possible  that  she  erred  ;  but  she  made  a 
good  end." 

Very  few  will  be  able  to  understand  such  sin- 
cerity, such  a  complete  absence  of  declamation, 
such  a  perfect  horror  of  posing  and  phrase-making, 
so  much  innocence  of  mind.  Genius  plays  with 
error  as  children  play  with  serpents  ;  they  are  not 
bitten.  Madame  Sand  traversed  all  dreams  ;  she 
smiled  on  all,  believed  for  a  moment  in  all  ;  her 
practical  judgment  was  sometimes  led  astray  ;  but, 
as  an  artist,  she  never  made  a  mistake.  Her  works 
are  really  the  echo  of  our  century.  She  will  be 
loved,  she  will  be  sought,  when  this  poor  nineteenth 
century  which  we  calumniate,  but  which  will  one 
day  be  pardoned  much,  shall  be  no  more.  George 
Sand  will  come  to  life  again  as  our  interpreter. 
The  century  has  not  received  a  wound  at  which  her 
heart  has  not  bled,  it  has  not  suffered  a  malady 
which  has  not  wrung  from  her  harmonious  tears. 
Her  books  bear  promises  of  immortality  because 
they  will  be  forever  the  testimony  of  that  which  we 
have  desired,  thought,  felt,  suffered. 

Give  quickly  to  your  readers  these  fine  pages,  the 


214       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

last,  it  would  seem,  that  she  wrote  before  being 
struck  down  by  the  pains  of  death,  and  believe  in 
my  sincere  affection. 


M.  COUSIN. 

MY  learned  colleague,  M.  Janet,  has  lately  pub- 
lished a  volume  filled  with  facts  and  judicious  re- 
marks, under  the  title  :  "  Victor  Cousin  and  his 
Works."*  M.  Janet  has  decided  that  the  moment 
has  arrived  for  setting  forth  with  impartiality  the 
work  of  philosophical  restoration  attempted  by  M. 
Cousin  at  the  beginning  of  this  century.  He  has 
fulfilled  his  task  like  a  friend  ;  but  friendship  has 
not  blinded  him.  Disparagement,  after  all,  leads 
to  the  commission  of  as  many  errors  as  good  will. 
An  excellent  principle  in  literary  history  is,  to  dis- 
trust all  testimony,  but,  in  the  end,  to  believe 
friends  rather  than  enemies. 

The  oblivion  which,  in  less  than  twenty  years, 
has  overtaken  M.  Cousin's  work,  is  singular.  This 
oblivion  is  unjust ;  nevertheless,  it  can  be  explained 
on  many  grounds.  It  is  not  good  for  philosophy 
to  win  too  complete  victories.  The  Revolution  of 
1830  was  more  fatal  to  M.  Cousin  than  the  narrow 
spirit  of  the  Restoration  had  been.  Once  free,  or, 
to  express  it  more  accurately,  being  obliged  to 
translate  into  practice  that  which  had  been  hitherto 
only  a  theory  for  him,  he  was  forced  to  enter  into 
*  Paris,  Calmann  Levy. 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  215 

the  order  of  compromises  and  concessions  ;  he  be- 
came an  administrator  of  philosophy  rather  than  a 
philosopher.  The  very  sincere  desire  to  found  a 
philosophy  which  might  be  taught  in  the  schools, 
and  to  replace  the  wretched  manuals  which  had 
reigned  hitherto,  debased  his  genius.  He  fell  into 
the  chimera  of  a  state  philosophy,  into  the  dream 
of  a  lay  catechism,  implying  a  double  erroneous 
assumption  ;  the  first  that  freethinkers  would  be 
content  with  it,  the  second,  that  it  would  enchant 
the  Catholics.  Now,  neither  the  freethinkers  nor 
the  Catholics  lent  themselves  to  this  misapprehen- 
sion. M.  Cousin's  condescension  was  wasted.  His 
marvelous  talent  never  abandoned  him,  but,  by  dint 
of  seeing  him  preserve,  for  a  period  of  nearly  forty 
years,  a  prudent  silence  upon  the  problems  which 
constitute  the  very  essence  of  philosophy,  people 
became  unaccustomed  to  regard  him  as  a  philoso- 
pher ;  the  exquisite  writer  was  prejudicial  to  the 
thinker;  he  seemed  to  content  himself  so  easily 
with  official  solutions  that  people  began  to  doubt 
whether  the  thirst  of  the  true  had  ever  been  an 
imperious  necessity  with  him. 

And  nevertheless,  such  were  the  complexity  and 
hidden  resources  of  his  rich  nature  that  the  thinker 
had  very  readily  existed  in  him,  before  the  orthodox 
dogmatist.  M.  Janet  excels  in  demonstrating 
this  ;  this  constitutes  the  new  and  finely  observed 
side  of  his  book.  There  were  two  phases  in  the 
philosophical  life  of  M.  Cousin.  The  supreme  end 


2 1 6       RECOLLECTIONS  A XD  LE  TTERS  OF 

of  existence  did  not  always  consist,  for  him,  in  draw- 
ing up,  in  correct  style,  programmes  appropriate  to 
the  use  of  Lyceums.  At  the  origin  of  all  this,  there 
was  a  mind  singularly  open  to  all  the  sounds  from 
without  ;  an  eloquent  and  profound  interpreter  of 
all  that  had  agitated  the  European  conscience,  a 
young  enthusiast,  intoxicated  in  his  day  with  the 
ideal  and  with  lofty  speculation.  His  defects,  then, 
are  those  of  his  time — a  time  preoccupied  to  excess 
with  eloquence,  with  poetry,  with  worldly  success  ; 
— these  are,  above  all,  the  defects  of  his  masters, 
the  Germans.  The  importance  which  he  attributes 
to  subjective  idealism  is  exaggerated  ;  the  attention 
devoted  to  the  scientific  knowledge  of  the  universe 
is  insufficient.  But,  athwart  a  host  of  defects, 
what  a  lofty  sentiment  of  the  infinite  !  what  a  just 
view  of  the  spontaneous  and  the  unconscious ! 
what  a  religious  accent,  unheard  since  Male- 
branche,  when  he  speaks  of  reason  !  How  well  one 
understands  the  traces  which  men  like  Jouffroy 
retained  of  this  first  instruction  !  I  made  acquaint- 
ance with  the  course  of  1818  in  its  first  edition, 
that  of  M.  Adolphe  Gamier,  which  is  the  genuine 
one,  under  the  shadows  of  Issy,  about  1842.  The 
impression  which  it  made  upon  me  was  extremely 
profound  ;  I  knew  those  winged  phrases  by  heart. 
I  dreamed  of  them.  I  am  conscious  that  many  of 
the  outlines  of  my  brain  are  derived  from  that 
source,  and  that  is  why,  without  ever  having  be- 
longed to  M.  Cousin's  school,  I  have  always  enter- 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  217 

tained  for  him  the  most  respectful  and  the  most 
deferential  feelings.  He  has  been  not  one  of  the 
fathers,  but  one  of  the  exciters  of  my  brain. 
Hence  M.  Janet  is  right  in  protesting  against  a 
sort  of  ingratitude  to  which  generations  are  sub- 
ject when  they  enjoy  full  liberty  on  entering  life. 
They  forget  how  much  courage  has  been  required 
to  lift  a  world  of  ignorance  and  prejudices  ;  they 
treat  as  weakness  what  was  merely  prudence  ;  they 
almost  reproach  Galileo  and  Descartes  for  not 
having  smashed  the  windows  of  the  Inquisition  and 
the  Sorbonne.  The  youth  of  our  day  can  hardly 
understand  any  longer,  in  particular,  what  the 
years  of  reaction  which  followed  1848  were  like — 
years  when  the  enemies  of  the  human  mind  reigned 
as  masters.  I  knew  M.  Cousin  about  that  epoch. 
Certainly,  the  effect  which  he  then  produced  upon 
me  was  far  less  than  that  which  I  had  felt  at  Issy 
when  listening  to  the  distant  echo  of  his  first  word. 
I  was  more  formed,  less  susceptible  to  captivation, 
and — he  had  lost  the  greater  part  of  his  fascinations. 
But  what  charm  still  !  what  gayety  !  what  love  of 
work  !  what  respect  for  the  language,  and  what 
conscientiousness  in  research!  I  loved  him  twice,  in 
a  manner,  and  the  man  I  went  to  salute  at  the  Sor- 
bonne was  not  exactly  the  same  who  had  troubled 
and  enchanted  me  at  Issy.  But  I  always  found  him 
good,  amiable,  living  exclusively  the  life  of  the 
spirit,  sincerely  liberal.  Two  classes  of  persons 
only  could  be  severe  toward  him :  in  the  first 


2 1 8       RECOLLECTIONS  A ND  LE  TTERS  OF 

place,  the  disciples  whom  he  had  enlisted,  and  who 
imagined  that  they  could  reconquer  their  inde- 
pendence by  ingratitude  ;  then  the  rather  heavy- 
witted,  who  took  him  quite  seriously,  arid  did  not 
admit  a  grain  of  irony  as  one  of  his  essential 
elements. 

In  short,  Victor  Cousin  was  one  of  the  most 
attractive  personalities  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
I  do  not  know  whether  he  will  hold  a  very  great 
place  in  the  critical  history  of  philosophy  con- 
ceived on  the  plan  of  Brucker  or  Tennemann ; 
but  certainly  he  will  fill  a  curious  chapter  of  the 
French  spirit  at  one  of  its  most  brilliant  moments. 
It  is  a  fact  very  honorable  for  the  half-forgotten, 
master  that  the  first  effort  at  reaction  in  his 
favor  should  come  from  so  sincere  a  mind,  and 
one  so  devoted  to  the  truth,  as  M.  Janet.  Happy 
is  he  who  is  still  sufficiently  alive  twenty  years 
after  his  death  to  find  so  clever  and  so  convinced 
an  apologist. 


MADAME    HORTENSE    CORNU. 

A  WEEK  ago,*  a  few  friends  were  assembled  in 
the  little  church  of  Longport,  near  Montlhery,  to 
pay  the  last  respects  to  a  woman  who  will  leave  a 
deep  impression  on  all  who  knew  her.  Madame 
Hortense  Cornu  will  occupy  an  important  place  in 
the  history  of  our  times,  and,  nevertheless,  it  has 
*  June  10,  1875. 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  219 

been  granted  to  only  a  very  small  number  to  ap- 
preciate that  rare  mind,  that  noble  heart,  that  phil- 
osophical soul,  that  rich  nature  in  which  the  most 
varied  gifts  were  united  without  contradiction. 
The  seclusion  in  which  she  had  lived  for  the  last  five 
years  had  caused  her  to  be  forgotten  ;  the  ingrati- 
tude of  some,  the  injustice  of  others  had  created  a 
void  about  her ;  she  almost  rejoiced  in  it  ;  she  was 
too  philosophical  to  seek,  with  death  so  near,  any 
consolations  save  the  memory  of  the  good  which 
she  had  done. 

Hortense  Albin  Lacroix  was  born  in  Paris,  on  the 
8th  of  April,  1809.  Her  mother  was  attached  to  the 
service  of  Queen  Hortense.  Her  fate  was  full  of  pe- 
culiarities. One  year  previously,  almost  to  a  day,  he 
who  was  destined  to  become  the  Emperor  Napoleon 
III.  was  born  in  the  same  house.  The  two  children 
grew  up  together. and,  dating  from  1815,  became 
inseparable,  receive^!  the  same  education.  That 
which  was  lacking  in  this  education  was  not  knowl- 
edge on  the  part  of  the  masters  ;  it  was  coherence, 
oversight,  attention  on  the  part  of  the  parents  and 
preceptors.  Louis  Napoleon  was  the  same  then 
that  he  was  in  later  years  ;  a  nature  profound, 
dreamy,  embarrassed,  but  strong  and  obstinate,  in- 
capable of  being  turned  aside  from  his  fixed  idea, 
incapable,  also,  of  acquiring  from  without  that 
which  the  sluggish  and  obscure  movement  of  his 
own  brain  did  not  lead  him  to  see  himself.  He 
possessed  the  inflexible  will  of  the  believer,  the 


220        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

awkwardness  of  a  man  held  by  an  evil  spirit  ;  his 
absolute  lack  of  facility  predestined  him  to  em- 
brace energetically  whatever  he  understood,  but 
also  never  to  understand  a  mass  of  things.  The 
lessons  which  he  received  as  a  child  were  nearly 
useless  to  him  ;  the  master  did  not  consider  it  his 
duty  to  have  recourse  to  long  and  patient  methods 
to  make  his  teaching  penetrate  a  mind  which  was 
closed  only  in  appearance,  but  into  which  one 
could  enter  only  after  having  long  sought  the  ap- 
proaches. 

It  was  quite  otherwise  with  the  little  girl  of. 
twelve  or  thirteen  years  who  listened  beside  him. 
There  was  no  necessity  for  aiding  her  to  under- 
stand ;  the  lessons  were,  in  reality,  for  her.  The 
house  was  vast,  sad,  solitary.  Shut  up  alone, 
aimost  all  day  long,  in  a  great  schoolroom,  the 
two  children 'brought  themselves  up  as  best  they 
might.  In  one  hour  Hortense  had  scampered 
through  her  task  and  that  of  her  fellow-student, 
and  the  rest  of  the  time  was  spent  in  exercises  of 
strategy,  for  which  the  school  books  suffered. 
The  tables,  the  chairs,  the  benches,  became  im- 
provised fortresses ;  dictionaries  served  as  pro- 
jectiles, and  would  to  heaven  that  the  Prince  had 
always  confined  himself  to  such  inoffensive  ar- 
tillery as  that  ! 

The  good  and  affectionate  nature  of  Prince  Na- 
poleon could  not  fail  to  attach  to  him  the  child 
who  then  shared  his  sort  of  seclusion.  Hortense 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  221 

Lacroix  had  precisely  that  which  he  lacked — move- 
ment, initiative,  life.  Through  her,  the  external 
universe  made  its  way  to  him.  Shut  up,  after  the 
manner  of  a  somnambulist,  in  a  fantastic  world, 
haunted  even  then  by  that  sort  of  hallucination  of 
the  Napoleonic  specter,  which,  like  the  ghost  in 
Hamlet,  was  destined  to  lead  him  to  the  end  of  the 
narrow  path  beyond  which  there  lies  nothing  but 
the  abyss,  the  timid,  headstrong,  taciturn  child 
had  found  a  sister  in  this  little  comrade,  who  dared 
everything  with  him,  astonished  him,  roused  him, 
shook  him  up  incessantly,  giving  him  his  education 
all  by  herself  and  serving  as  interpreter  between  him 
and  the  world  of  reality.  Hortense  Lacroix,  at  that 
age,  was  as  intelligent  as  she  ever  was  ;  reason  did 
not  yet  regulate  in  her  that  touch  of  the  witty,  revo- 
lutionary Paris  street-Arab  who  divines  what  he 
has  not  yet  learned.  This  charming  little  Ga- 
vroche,  with  her  delicate  features,  was  in  every 
respect  the  contrary  of  the  grave,  gloomy,  em- 
barrassed child,  who  could  not  express  his 
thoughts,  but  whose  inward  characteristics  and 
destiny  were  already  fixed  in  an  irrevocable  man- 
ner. 

Although  overthrown,  the  Bonaparte  family 
kept  up  their  relations  with  most  of  the  reigning 
houses  of  Germany.  Hortense  Lacroix  was  early 
known  to  them,  and  singularly  appreciated  by 
them  ;  the  Grand-Duchess  Stephanie  of  Baden,  in 
particular,  cherished  a  lively  affection  for  her. 


222        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

Germany  was  then  at  its  moment  of  greatest  philo- 
sophical and  literary  splendor.  That  beautiful 
and  intelligent  manner  of  understanding  the  cul- 
ture of  the  human  mind  left  upon  her  a  pro- 
found impression  ;  but  she  speedily  descried  its 
gaps  and  limits.  Italy  was  what  enchanted  her 
most  of  all ;  she  was  thoroughly  intoxicated  by  it  ; 
the  taste  for  art  awoke  vigorously  in  her,  and  she 
conceived  at  that  time,  as  the  principal  occupation 
of  her  life,  a  history  of  modern  art,  even  to  its 
most  obscure  pages.  Her  erudition  rendered  her 
perfectly  fitted  for  this.  The  pages  which  she 
published  on  Italian  art  in  the  eighteenth  volume 
of  M.  Didot's  "  Encyclopedic  Moderne,"  under  the 
pseudonym  of  Sebastien  Albin,  have  something 
very  just  and  solid  about  them.  She  also  planned 
some  studies  in  iconography,  in  particular  a  "his- 
tory of  the  crucifix,"  which,  however,  I  believe  she 
never  executed. 

Two  youthful  pupils  of  M.  Ingres,  who  were 
then  in  Rome  and  frequented  the  palace  inhabited 
by  the  Bonaparte  family,  knew  her,  and  conceived 
for  her  the  most  lively  attachment.  Gleyre  was 
her  lifelong  friend  ;  Sebastian  Cornu  married  her. 
M.  Cornu  possessed  precisely  what  was  required 
for  Hortense's  happiness.  This  very  conscien- 
tious and  decisive  artist  was,  at  the  same  time, 
the  gentlest  and  best  of  men.  By  his  side,  Hor- 
tense  exercised  freely  her  thoroughly  masculine 
activity,  without  this  tranquil,  almost  mystic  friend 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  223 

after  the  manner  of  Flandrin,  ever  once  being 
troubled  by  a  vicinity,  exquisite,  no  doubt,  but 
which  did  not  create  precisely  a  desert  around 
him. 

The  fact  is  that  no  woman  ever  lived  the 
elevated  parts  of  the  life  of  her  century  with  so 
much  ardor  as  Madame  Cornu.  Nothing  escaped 
her.  Her  taste  for  conversation  and  discussion 
had  led  her  to  make  acquaintance  with  all  that 
was  then  in  agitation  in  Italy  and  elsewhere. 
What  her  mind  penetrated  quickly,  her  heart  em- 
braced with  warmth.  She  thought  like  a  man  and 
felt  lil*e  a  woman.  Although  extremely  German 
in  the  turn  of  her  intelligence,  although  half 
Italian  by  admiration  and  love  of  an  unequaled 
past,  she  was  essentially  French  in  spirit.  Her 
patriotism  was  the  purest,  the  most  disinterested, 
the  most  sincere  that  I  have  ever  known.  Her 
dream  was  a  France,  the  center  of  the  aspirations 
of  the  whole  world.  Her  religion  was  the  religion 
of  France  ;  she  was  faithful  to  her,  even  when 
she  perceived  her  passing  errors  and  illusions. 

Now,  at  that  epoch,  France  really  had  a  re- 
ligion— it  was  liberalism,  the  taste  for  the  noble  de- 
velopment of  humanity,  esteem  and  sympathy  for 
all  that  bears  the  features  of  a  man,  sympathy  for 
all  that  is  weak,  persecuted,  for  all  that  seeks  to 
rise,  to  free  itself.  Stupid  that  we  are  we  did 
not  dream  that  those  whom  our  country  aided 
most  to  escape  from  the  other  world  would  soon 


224       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

say  to  her,  like  the  scoffers  of  Calvary  :  "  He  has 
saved  others,  himself  he  cannot  save.  Let  him 
now  descend  if  he  can  !  "  Madame  Cornu,  indif- 
ferent to  the  ingratitude  which  concerned  only 
herself,  but  less  indulgent  to  ingratitude  toward 
others,  could  not  recall  without  bitterness  how 
many  recent  upstarts  she  had  formerly  seen  sup- 
pliant and  happy  at  receiving  favors.  Will  these 
experiences  correct  us,  and  cause  us  to  renounce 
the  old  virtues  of  whose  habit  we  shall  succeed 
in  breaking  the  world  ?  It  is  hardly  probable. 
We  are  too  old  to  follow  the  maxims  which  the 
new  leaders  of  fashion  seem  to  desire  to  inaugur- 
ate. If  the  final  expression  of  wisdom  and  prog- 
ress in  setting  the  rights  of  man  and  the  rights 
of  people  at  defiance  ;  in  treating  as  chimerical 
all  chivalry,  all  generosity,  all  gratitude  be- 
tween nations;  in  substituting  for  our  clear  and 
simple  notion  of  liberty  I  know  not  what  subtleties 
by  means  of  which  liberty  is  proved  to  consist  in 
being  as  much  governed  as  possible,  for  one's 
own  good,  yes,  we  prefer  to  be  among  the  lag- 
gards rather  than  to  serve  such  progress  as  that. 
Let  us  learn  to  wait ;  some  day  we  shall  be  regret- 
ted. The  world  has  preferred  a  master  to  a  ca- 
pricious mistress,  who  sometimes  tormented  it. 
Let  it  earn  its  experience.  But  let  us  remain 
obstinately  liberal,  even  toward  those  who  are 
not  so  themselves ;  let  us  say,  like  Corneille's 
Pauline : 


ERXEST  REN  AN.  225 

My  duty  does  not  depend  upon  his  ; 

Let  him  fail,  if  he  will  ;  I  must  still  do  mine. 

Madame  Cornu  had  committed  all  the  noble  er- 
rors of  the  days  when  she  was  young.  She  loved 
Italy,  she  loved  Poland  ;  she  had  an  aversion  for 
what  is  strong,  and  a  taste  for  the  weak,  even  per- 
ceiving always  in  that  very  weakness  a  presumption 
of  sound  right.  That  is  why  she  was  generally  on 
the  side  of  those  who  conspired  ;  she  sympathized 
with  the  revolutionists  of  all  lands  ;  he  who  haz- 
arded his  life  for  his  cause  was  dear  to  her  from 
that  fact  alone.  In  France,  her  relations  were  with 
the  Republican  party.  At  the  epoch  of  her  life 
which  we  have  now  reached,  these  sentiments  had 
not  created  the  slightest  disagreement  between  her 
and  the  friend  of  her  childhood.  This  was  the 
time  when  the  latter  wrote  :  "What  we  require  in 
France  is  a  government  in  harmony  with  our  needs, 
our  nature.  Our  needs  are  equality  and  liberty  ; 
our  nature  is  to  be  the  ardent  promoters  of  civiliza- 
tion." During  his  imprisonment  at  Ham,  Prince 
Louis  found  in  his  childhood's  friend  more  devo- 
tion than  ever.  The  prince  had  a  taste  for  histor- 
ical researches,  and  would  have  displayed  some 
aptitude  for  them,  had  not  his  education  been 
neglected.  Madame  Cornu  constituted  herself  his 
secretary  at  a  distance.  She  passed  whole  days  in 
the  libraries,  copying  passages  for  him,  and  em- 
ployed her  numerous  friends  in  procuring  for  him 
the  books  which  he  required.  Never  was  friend- 


226       RECOLT.ECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

ship  more  free  from  any  calculation.  Who  could 
foresee,  in  1840,  that,  eight  years  later,  that  which 
had  been  madness  would  become  wisdom  in  the 
eyes  of  five  million  and  a  half  electors? 

Madame  Cornu,  in  any  case,  was  so  far  from 
agreeing  with  the  counselors  of  illegal  measures, 
that  the  2d  of  December,  1851,  marked  a  com- 
plete rupture  between  her  and  her  friend.  For 
many  years  she  ceased  absolutely  to  see  him.  She 
denied  herself  no  sprightly  saying ;  her  little  house 
on  the  Boulevard  Latour-Maubourg  was  actively 
watched  ;  her  name  figured  for  a  short  time  on  the 
lists  of  exile  compiled  by  an  awkward  zealot.  It 
was  impossible  that  this  state  of  things  should  last 
long.  The  Emperor  had  need  of  his  little  friend 
of  Augsburg  and  Arenenburg.  She  was  a  part  of 
himself,  an  organ  of  his  life.  Madame  Cornu's 
affection  for  the  prince  was  too  warm  to  keep  her 
resentment  from  yielding  at  a  sign.  Moreover,  she 
was  like  all  the  rest  of  us.  She  had  an  ideal  which 
she  placed  above  politics.  What  finer  occasion 
could  she  have  to  realize  the  good  which  she  had 
dreamed  ?  All  favors  were  laid  at  her  feet.  It  is 
unnecessary  to  say  that  she  never  accepted  any- 
thing for  herself;  but  from  that  moment  she  con- 
ceived the  plan  which  absorbed  her  wholly  for  the 
next  fifteen  years:  to  seek  to  surround  the  Em- 
peror with  better  people,  to  recall  to  him  the 
dreams  of  his  youth,  to  arouse  his  liberal  sympa- 
thies for  suffering  nations,  to  recall  to  him  the 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  227 

special  bonds  which  united  him  with  Italy.  An 
excellent  policy,  but  one  in  which  persistence  was 
necessary.  It  was  not  her  fault  that  the  hesita- 
tions of  the  Emperor's  mind,  that  habit  of  his  of 
believing  that  he  must  take  a  step  backward  for 
every  step  which  he  took  forward,  transformed  into 
mortal  poison  that  which  should  have  been  our 
safety  and  our  strength.  We  shall,  perhaps,  some 
day  regret  that  she  who  knew  so  well  the  intermit- 
tences  of  that  singular  mind,  its  tergiversations, 
its  abrupt  decisions  which  became  fatally  irre- 
vocable, did  not  calculate  better  the  bearing  of  the 
effect  which  she  produced  through  him.  But  who 
can  foresee  the  unforeseeable?  ....  Moreover,  it 
was  in  another  direction  that  Madame  Cornu  was 
destined  to  render  to  her  country  eminent  services 
whose  memory  will  not  perish. 

Madame  Cornu's  vigorous  education  and  her 
long  researches  had  made  of  her,  literally,  a  savant. 
She  loved  the  conversation  of  the  erudite,  and, 
beginning  with  1856,  she  missed  hardly  a  single 
session  of  the  Academy  of  Inscriptions  and  Belles- 
Lettres.  We  regarded  her  as  a  colleague  ;  we  dis- 
cussed with  her  the  gaps  in  our  studies,  the  many 
fine  things  to  be  done,  the  many  reforms  to  be 
brought  about.  She  understood  everything,  saw 
clearly  what  was  possible  and  what  was  not.  She 
had  too  much  good  judgment  to  believe  that  she 
had  riveted  fetters  on  the  Emperor.  That  was  not 
granted  to  anyone  ;  the  solitary  nature,  the  pro- 


228       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

found  personality  of  Napoleon  III.  never  permitted 
him  to  give  himself  wholly.  He  yielded  much  ;  he 
was  even  weak  ;  "  No "  was  the  word  which  he 
found  it  hardest  to  utter ;  but  the  foundation  of 
his  thought  was  unalterable.  His  own  government 
displeased  him,  but  he  thought  that  France  did 
not  wish  any  other.  Madame  Cornu  saw  very  well 
that  it  was  impossible  to  change  the  groundwork 
of  the  government,  and,  above  all,  to  persuade  the 
Emperor  to  modify  his  official  circle  ;  still,  she  saw 
that,  by  small  concessions,  much  could  be  obtained, 
especially  in  the  order  of  serious  things  where  she 
was  sure  to  disturb  the  designs  of  very  few  rivals 
at  court. 

Superior  instruction,  or  rather  scientific  instruc- 
tion, was  the  line  in  which  she  succeeded  best. 
Her  knowledge  of  Germany  had  revealed  to  her, 
before  we  had  talked  to  her  about  it,  the  defect  of 
our  higher  education,  of  those  courses  open  to  all 
comers,  without  definite  pupils,  where  one  goes  to 
pass  an  hour,  not  to  study  a  science,  but  to  hear 
someone  talk  agreeably.  Let  the  Faculties  con- 
tinue the  traditions  of  these  excellent  lessons ;  we 
have  nothing  to  say  against  that;  but  Athenaeum 
lectures  at  the  College  de  France  seem  to  us  out  of 
place.  The  extraordinary  brilliancy  of  the  instruc- 
tion at  the  Sorbonne,  under  the  Restoration  ;  the 
too  great  indulgence  which  talent  lacking  in  science 
enjoyed  during  the  reign  of  Louis  Philippe  ;  the 
sharing  of  historical  studies  between  the  Academy 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  229 

of  Moral  and  Political  Sciences,  and  the  Academy 
of  Inscriptions  and  Belles-Lettres — which  had  the 
inconvenient  feature  that  it  allowed  of  the  sup- 
position that,  in  historical  sciences,  general  ex- 
position and  work  on  documents  can  be  sun- 
dered— and,  above  all,  the  taste  which  leads  our 
country  far  more  toward  literary  success  than 
toward  scientific  discussions,  had  brought  about  in 
those  of  our  institutions  whose  only  aim  is  the  dis- 
covery of  the  truth  a  certain  abasement.  Thanks 
to  Madame  Cornu,  a  renaissance  took  place.  The 
creation  of  several  courses — like  those  of  M.  Ber- 
thelot,  of  M.  Leon  Renier,  of  M.  Breal,  at  the  Col- 
lege of  France,  the  establishment  of  the  School 
for  Higher  Studies,  many  scientific  missions— some 
of  which  were  very  fruitful — a  new  impulse  imparted 
to  the  acquisition  of  objects  of  antiquity,  a  great 
number  of  learned  publications  undertaken  with 
the  justest  feeling  of  the  requirements  of  erudition, 
marked  a  new  era.  It  is  very  far  from  our  inten- 
tion to  say  that  all  this  was  her  work  ;  but  all  this 
belonged  to  her  indirectly,  since  it  was  under  her 
influence  that  the  Emperor  entered  into  the  direc- 
tion of  ideas  which  rendered  the  second  half  of  his 
reign  a  very  brilliant  epoch  for  critical  studies. 
M.  Duruy,  whom  Madame  Cornu  supported  with 
all  her  credit,  applied  the  same  views  in  the  most 
widely  varying  directions.  At  the  present  hour, 
the  fruits  are  visible.  An  immense  progress  has 
been  accomplished  in  our  historical  and  philolog- 


230       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

ical  studies.  An  authority  has  been  established 
outside  the  elegant  nonsense  which  fascinates  the 
members  of  the  fashionable  world.  Healthy  meth- 
ods are  represented  in  nearly  all  branches  by  some 
good  worker.  The  School  of  Higher  Studies  is  an 
open  laboratory,  where  these  methods  are  taught  in 
familiar  lessons,  the  only  sort  which  are  fruitful. 
I  made  some  objection,  at  first,  on  this  last  point. 
"  Why,"  I  said,  "create  a  new  establishment  under 
this  title  ?  The  School  of  Higher  Studies  has 
existed  for  three  hundred  and  fifty  years.  Fran- 
cis I.  created  it  in  1530;  it  is  the  College  de 
France,  since  this  great  establishment  represents 
exactly  that  scientific  elaboration  for  which  the 
University — principally  a  corps  for  teaching— does 
not  suffice.  Placed  between  the  Sorbonne  and  our 
College,  your  school  will  be  what  is  termed  in  ar- 
chitecture out  of  perpendicular."  They  did  not 
halt  at  this  objection,  and,  no  doubt,  they  did  well. 
The  Emperor  found  it  easier  to  create  new  things 
than  to  reform  that  which  was  established,  for  the 
established  defends  itself  ;  being  kindly  by  nature, 
the  Emperor  listened  to  all  claims  and,  in  order 
not  to  discontent  anyone,  took  contradictory  meas- 
ures, whence  he  afterward  extricated  himself  only 
at  the  cost  of  a  good  deal  of  embarrassment. 

This  was  Madame  Cornu's  experience  in  the 
efforts  which  she  essayed  in  behalf  of  the  fine  arts. 
Here  she  suffered  almost  complete  shipwreck.  Her 
taste  was  grand  and  pure  ;  she  dreamed  of  an  art 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  231 

of  the  state,  classic  and  grave,  and  could  not  en- 
dure the  style  of  production  which  commerce  en- 
courages. In  art,  as  in  literature,  she  was  even  a 
little  unjust,  perhaps,  toward  certain  merits.  In 
this  direction  she  held,  in  the  highest  degree,  the 
opinions  of  the  Bonapartes,  which  were  essentially 
classic,  intolerant,  even,  at  times,  which  conceded  no 
part  to  fancy,  to  petty  literature,  to  romanticism, 
which  were  narrowly  intrenched  in  Greek,  Latin, 
and  Italian  tradition.  I  never  could  induce  her  to 
be  just  to  Sainte-Beuve  nor  to  one  or  two  of  the 
writers  of  our  times,  whose  manner  prevented  her 
discerning  their  rare  qualities.  Art  for  the  sake  of 
art,  literature  for  the  sake  of  literature,  were  intol- 
erable to  her.  She  did  not  admit  that  there  could 
be  lateral  currents  in  the  great  stream  of  the 
human  mind.  Literature,  in  her  eyes,  was  a  com- 
bat for  France  and  progress  ;  those  who  lingered 
by  the  hedgerows  seemed  to  her  deserters. 

As  all  this  was  in  her  the  fruit  of  the  love  for  things 
for  their  own  sake,  she  resigned  herself  cheerfully 
to  be  frequently  vanquished.  She  suffered  two  or 
three  grand  defeats  from  the  Emperor  ;  but  the 
nature  of  the  friendship  which  the  Emperor 
cherished  for  her  could  suffer  no  shock,  nor  did  it 
permit  of  any  susceptibility  on  her  side.  The 
kindness  of  her  Majesty  the  Empress,  her  affection, 
her  maternal  cares  for  the  Prince  Imperial,  the 
constant  friendship  of  Prince  Napoleon,  of  the 
Princess  Julie  Bonaparte,  of  her  Majesty  the 


232        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

Queen  of  Holland  rendered  her  happy  and  sus- 
tained her  in  her  trials. 

The  lamentable  act  of  the  month  of  July,  1870, 
overturned  all  these  dreams.  She  did  not  see  the 
Emperor  during  those  gloomy  days,  and,  had  she 
seen  him,  she  probably  could  not  have  pierced  the 
fatal  mist  in  which  that  brain,  whose  weaknesses 
she  knew  so  well,  had  shut  itself  up.  At  the  be- 
ginning of  the  war  she  withdrew  to  a  little  house 
which  she  owned  at  Longpont.  There  M.  Cornu 
was  attacked  by  a  serious  illness  ;  he  died  while 
being  transported  to  Versailles.  An  affection  of 
the  heart  had  made  its  appearance  in  her  some 
time  previously  ;  in  a  few  months  she  grew  twenty 
years  older.  She  was  much  neglected,  as  she 
might  have  expected.  This  woman,  to  whom  so 
many  people  owed  their  lives  and  fortunes,  found 
herself  in  a  state  bordering  on  privation.  She  had 
nothing  but  her  house  at  Longpont,  which  was  in- 
significant in  value.  If  some  of  her  friends  had 
not  made  her  understand  that  her  poverty  would 
be  an  insupportable  reproach  to  them,  she  would 
have  died  in  destitution. 

Her  lofty  idealism  never  weakened  for  a  moment 
in  her  cruel  illness.  During  the  last  days,  the 
struggle  between  a  strong  and  powerful  head,  still 
all  alive,  and  annihilated  organs,  was  terrible.  In 
bidding  farewell  to  one  of  her  friends,  she  said  : 

"  Tell  Marguerite  [a  young  girl  of  eighteen]  that 
dying  is  no  great  matter  ;  only  it  is  very  long." 


ERNEST  RENAN.  233 

Who,  more  than  she,  deserved  to  leave  life  calmly  ? 
She  did  a  great  deal  of  good  ;  the  good  that  she 
did  survives  her,  and  will  bear  fruit  without  ceas- 
ing ;  all  her  friends  will  keep  her  image  preciously 
engraved  upon  their  hearts. 


QUEEN    SOPHIE    OF    HOLLAND.* 

THE  death  of  Queen  Sophie  of  Holland  is  a  great 
grief  to  all  those  who  love  France,  as  well  as  all 
good  and  beautiful  things.  "  '  The  Last  of  the 
Great  Princesses,'  that  is  the  title  of  the  study 
that  ought  to  be  published  of  her,"  said  to  me  yes- 
terday one  of  the  men  who  knew  her  best,  and  who 
alone  could  relate  all  the  sincerity,  disinterested 
.ardor,  lofty  aspirations  in  this  choice  soul,  who 
was  the  victim,  in  so  many  respects,  of  our  century 
of  iron.  She  possessed,  in  fact,  in  the  highest  de- 
gree, the  qualities  which  the  throne  exalts  but  does 
not  create.  Modern  philosophy,  which  makes  the 
destiny  of  man  consist  in  a  perpetual  effort  toward 
reason,  cannot  always  be  suitable  to  those  whom 
fate  has  vowed  to  humble  duties  ;  it  is,  above  all, 
the  philosophy  of  sovereigns. 

Queen  Sophie,  uniting  with  this  the  delicate  tact 
of  the  woman,  replied  victoriously  to  those  who  be- 
lieve that  the  sole  perfection  of  ruins  is  the  tender 
and  heedless  grace  of  a  Marguerite  de  Provence, 
or  the  resignation  of  a  Jeanne  de  Valois. 
*Died  May  25,  1877. 


234       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

She  belonged  to  that  grand  epoch  of  the  German 
race  in  which  so  many  strong  qualities,  masked  for 
centuries  by  roughness  or  a  sort  of  awkwardness, 
suddenly  reached  the  point  of  revealing  a  fojm  of 
human  aristocracy  hitherto  unknown.  That  which 
characterized,  in  the  highest  degree,  this  new  mode 
of  feeling  and  thinking,  was  warmth  of  soul,  a  cer- 
tain nobility,  generosity,  strength,  implying  respect 
for  one's  self  and  for  others.  French  society  of  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  had  furnished 
the  model  for  what  may  be  called  politeness — en- 
lightened mind.  Goethe  and  his  great  contempo- 
raries, while  paying  homage  to  our  brilliant  initiative, 
demonstrated  that  Voltaire,  despite  his  well-de- 
served glory,  was  not  everything  ;  that  the  heart  is 
a  master  to  whom  it  is  as  necessary  to  listen  as  to 
the  mind.  Religion  no  longer  consisted  of  servile 
attachment  to  the  superstitions  of  the  past,  nor  to 
the  narrow  forms  of  a  theological  orthodoxy  ;  it 
was  the  infinite,  vividly  comprehended,  embraced, 
realized  in  all  one's  life.  Philosophy  was  no  longer 
something  dry  and  negative  ;  it  was  the  pursuit  of 
the  truth  in  all  its  branches,  with  the  certainty  that 
the  truth  to  be  discovered  would  be  a  thousand 
times  more  beautiful  than  the  error  which  it  re- 
placed. Such  a  scheme  of  wisdom  renders  him 
who  possesses  it  ardent  and  strong.  The  virile 
education  which  Queen  Sophie  received  at  the 
Court  of  Wurternberg,  her  rich  and  open  nature, 
early  inculcated  upon  her  those  grand  principles, 


ERNEST  RE  NAN.  235 

as  a  faith,  but  a  faith  which  does  not  know  what  it 
is  to  reject  or  hate. 

Her  whole  existence  was  permeated  with  it.  The 
German  Spirit  then  resembled  Jehovah,  who,  ac- 
cording to  the  fine  expression  of  Job,  "  maketh 
peace  upon  his  high  places."  They  did  not  wish 
to  destroy  anything,  they  sought  to  conciliate  every- 
thing. The  queen  remained  faithful  to  this  spirit, 
even  when  it  had  been  rejected  by  many  of  those 
who  had  proclaimed  it.  She  showed  herself  anx- 
ious to  welcome  every  good  thing  that  blossomed 
in  the  whole  world.  National  prejudice  was  what  she 
feared  the  most ;  far  from  penning  up  the  moral 
education  of  man  in  the  notions  of  one  race  and 
one  language,  she  dreamed,  like  Herder,  of  a  recip- 
rocal interchange  of  all  the  gifts  of  humanity. 
Her  sympathy  halted  only  in  the  presence  of  the 
mediocre  and  the  evil  ;  then  she  no  longer  under- 
stood. 

Thus  her  whole  life  was  passed  in  loving.  She 
loved  first  the  noble  country  which  had  her  for  its 
sovereign,  and  which,  better  than  any  other,  knew 
her  mind  and  her  goodness.  She  loved  Holland, 
not  only  because  fate  had  made  it  her  duty,  but  be- 
cause she  perceived  at  once  the  providential  char- 
acter of  this  sacred  estuary,  the  asylum  of  liberty  ; 
where  the  human  mind  had  so  often  found  a  refuge 
against  the  overstrong  powers  of  the  rest  of 
Europe.  Who  can  say  that  it  will  not  have  to  ful- 
fill this  mission  yet  again  ?  Holland  heartily  re- 


236        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

turned  her  affection.  Never  wassovereign  more  pop- 
ular. No  one  understood  better  than  she  the  soul 
of  the  nation,  its  past  grandeur,  its  future  duties. 
She  was  proud  of  being  associated  with  so  much 
glory,  and  when,  a  few  days  hence,  she  reposes  at 
Delft,  by  the  side  of  the  Taciturn  whom  she  ad- 
mired, her  tomb  will  be  one  seal  the  more  to  the 
compact  of  union  between  Holland  and  the  house  of 
Orange,  that  is  to  say,  to  the  fundamental  chart  of. 
the  nationality  of  the  country. 

She  loved  France  also.  On  the  day  of  her  mar- 
riage, in  1839,  at  Stuttgart,  the  Protestant  clergy- 
man who  preached  saw  fit  to  spice  his  sermon  with 
a  diatribe  against  Napoleon.  A  young  man  of 
seventeen  years,  the  first  cousin  to  the  princess, 
who  was  present,  rose  and  left  the  building.  This 
was  a  scandal,  a  great  affair  in  the  little  court. 

"  If  I  had  been  able,  I  should  have  done  as  he 
did,"  said  she.  The  grandeur  of  the  French 
epopee,  consisting  of  two  indissoluble  parts,  the 
Revolution  and  the  Empire,  had  early  taken  posses- 
sion of  her  imagination.  She  loved  us  with  all 
our  defects.  Our  writers,  our  artists,  our  wits  were 
familiar  to  her  ;  she  often  knew  them  better  than 
we  did  ourselves.  She  was  even  curious  about  our 
democracy.  She  feared  so  greatly  to  pass  by,  in- 
attentively, anything  which  might  have  a  future  ! 
Poor  France  !  she  forgave  her,  because  she  knew 
that  a  great  heart  lay  behind  her  faults,  and  that 
one  day  the  prodigal  son  would  be  preferred  to 
those  who  had  never  sinned. 


ERNEST  RENAN.  237 

It  was  thus  that  this  great  queen,  the  most  Ger- 
man of  the  princesses  of  our  century  probably,  had 
had  nothing  but  sympathy  for  what  fanatics  call 
the  race  enemy.  She  loved,  both  France  and  Ger- 
many, and  she  was  right.  Noble  things,  far  from 
excluding  each  other,  hold  each  other,  summon 
each  other,  and  we  maintain  that  the  great  Ger- 
mans of  former  days  would  recognize  much  more 
as  their  true  sons  in  spirit  those  who,  for  the  last 
ten  years,  have  protested  against  a  violent  policy, 
than  those  who  allow  themselves  to  be  dazzled  by 
these  exhibitions  of  force.  The  queen  suffered 
cruelly  on  the  day  when  she  saw  what  she  had 
adored  as  an  aspiration  toward  justice  become  the 
brutal  negation  of  all  ideal  principles.  German 
unity  had  been  her  dream  ;  but  she  desired  it  to 
be  brought  about  otherwise.  She  hardly  recog- 
nized the  Germany  of  her  youth  in  that  imitation 
of  the  defects  of  our  First  Empire,  in  that  transcend- 
ent disdain  of  all  generosity,  in  that  fashion  of 
reproaching  others  for  imitating  those  fine  exam- 
ples of  internal  reform  which  Germany,  in  its  fine 
days,  gave  to  all  peoples. 

That  ardent  life  consumed  itself  ;  a  sort  of  in- 
ward fire  devoured  that  nature  which  nothing  ever 
left  untouched.  It  is  not  that  the  queen  did  not 
know  how  to  take  rest.  Her  tranquil  Maison  du 
Bois,  near  The  Hague,  breathed  calm  and  serene 
gayety.  The  historical  studies  in  which  she  de- 
lighted, and  by  which  she  sought  to  distract  her 


238       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

thoughts  from  apprehensions  of  the  present,  fur- 
nished an  excellent  regimen  for  her  mind.  Never- 
theless, grave  symptoms  made  their  appearance  in 
connection  with  the  heart.  In  the  month  of 
December  last,  when  the  queen  beheld  Paris  for 
the  last  time,  her  friends  were  alarmed.  The 
sweet  and  tranquil  atmosphere  of  The  Hague  re- 
stored her  somewhat.  A  festival,  organized  by 
some  friends  of  philosophy  to  celebrate  the  anni- 
versary of  Spinoza's  death,  interested  her  greatly. 
She  wished  to  take  part  in  it  in  spirit,  and  caused  a 
portrait  of  the  Dutch  thinker,  which  never  quitted 
her  chamber,  and  is  probably  the  only  authentic 
one  of  him,  to  be  exhibited  in  the  hall  of  the  re- 
union. That  evening  she  mentioned  the  sage's 
fine  maxim  :  "  Philosophy  is  meditation,  not  on 
death  but  on  life."  Her  death  has  been  a  public 
calamity  to  Holland.  We  shall,  perhaps,  medi- 
tate upon  her  life  some  day,  when  it  will  be  pos- 
sible, in  thinking  of  her,  to  devote  a  share  to  some- 
thing besides  grief  and  regret. 


SPEECH    DELIVERED  AT  THE  FUNERAL  OF  M. 
ERNEST  HAVET,   DECEMBER  24,    1889. 

Gentlemen:  The  illustrious  colleague  to  whom 
we  to-day  bid  farewell  was  an  eminent  servant  of 
the  greatest  work  of  our  century,  the  persistent 
search  of  the  truth.  This  savant  was,  before  all 


ERNEST  KENAN.  *$$ 

else,  an  upright  man  of  French  race.  Like  Des- 
cartes, he  liked  only  clear  ideas  clearly  expressed. 
The  genius  of  Germany  (when  one  could  speak  of 
a  German  genius)  pierced  more  deeply,  perhaps, 
into  the  abysses  which  hem  us  in  so  closely  ;  but 
Havet  will  be  quoted,  in  the  centuries  to  come,  for 
having  been  the  first  to  cast  upon  the  problems 
which  have  troubled  souls  the  most,  a  few  just, 
firm,  sober,  and  cold  words.  He  believed,  and  I 
believe  with  him,  that  the  era  of  official  veils  is 
passed,  that  it  serves  no  end  to  make  a  distinction 
between  the  truths  which  are  good  for  utterance 
and  those  which  are  not  good,  since  no  one  is  de- 
ceived any  longer,  and  since  the  mass  of  the  hu- 
man species,  reading  the  eyes  of  the  thinker, 
demands  of  him,  without  circumlocution,  whether 
the  truth  is  not,  at  bottom,  melancholy.  The  only 
means  of  consoling  poor  humanity  a  little,  is  to 
persuade  it  thoroughly  that  we  are  concealing 
nothing  from  it,  and  that  we  are  treating  it,  not  as 
rhetoricians  occupied  with  political  and  pedagogi- 
cal cares,  but  as  learned  men,  with  absolute  sin- 
cerity. 

Havet  never  concealed  a  shade,  even  a  fugitive 
shade,  of  his  thought.  He  believed  in  civilization, 
in  reason,  in  that  light  of  the  human  conscience 
which  reveals  to  us  some  features  of  the  truth, 
some  rules  of  good.  For  him  the  history  of  this 
revelation,  the  only  real  one,  was  clear  in  its  essen- 
tial lines.  Born  in  Greece,  that  motherland  of  all 


240       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

harmonies,  reason,  under  divers  names  and  not 
without  strange  alloys,  makes  the  circuit  of  the 
world.  That  sun,  of  which  Rome  in  its  grand 
epoch  possessed  such  fine  reflections,  never  disap- 
pears completely.  Humanity  lives  upon  it.  The 
supernatural  ideas  of  the  Orient,  the  decadence  of 
the  ancient  world,  the  invasions  of  the  barbarians, 
veil  it  but  do  not  extinguish  it.  Christianity,  in  its 
vital  parts,  is  only  a  viaticum  composed  of  good 
Greek  ideas  and  cleverly  prepared  for  the  gloomy 
night  of  a  thousand  years  to  which  the  dawn  of  the 
Renaissance  put  an  end.  Thus  all  proceeds  from 
a  single  luminous  blossoming.  Greece  prepared 
the  scientific  framework,  capable  of  being  indefi- 
nitely enlarged,  and  the  philosophical  framework, 
susceptible  of  embracing  everything,  in  which,  for 
the  space  of  two  thousand  years,  the  intellectual 
and  moral  efforts  of  the  race  to  which  we  belong 
have  riot  ceased  to  move. 

Let  us  set  aside  then  all  petty  reserves  (I,  as  the 
historian  of  Israel,  should  have  some  to  make)  ; 
our  colleague  is  in  the  right.  Greek  culture  de- 
mands no  sacrifice  from  the  reason  ;  the  culture 
which  comes  from  the  East  does  demand  it,  since 
no  fact  has  ever  appeared  to  prove  that  a  Superior 
Being  has  made  to  a  man  or  to  men  any  revelation 
whatever.  The  idea  (to  kalori)  of  Greece  is  indeed 
the  whole  of  human  life,  embellished,  ennobled. 
It  was  Havet's  task  to  follow  this  great  ribbon  of 
living  water,  this  blue  Nile  which  traverses  the 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  241 

*• 

deserts.  He  acquitted  himself  of  it  with  a  sort  of 
faith.  Never  was  believer  more  faithful  to  his 
dogma  than  was  Havet  to  his  philosophy. 

Yes,  I  repeat  it,  he  was  right.  Greece  created 
truth  as  she  created  beauty.  On  the  other  hand, 
our  Celtic  and  Germanic  races  have  certainly  had 
some  share  in  founding  that  which  may  be  called 
honesty,  uprightness  of  heart.  All  the  best  that  is 
contained  in  Christianity  we  have  put  there,  and 
that  is  why  we  love  it,  that  is  why  it  must  not  be 
destroyed.  Christianity,  in  one  sense,  is  decidedly 
our  work,  and  in  seeking  therein  the  traces  of  our 
most  intimate  sentiments,  Havet  was  not  pursuing 
a  chimera.  Christianity  is  ourselves,  and  what  we 
love  the  most  in  it  is  ourselves.  Our  fresh,  cool 
fountains,  our  forests  of  oaks,  our  rocks  have  col- 
laborated in  this.  In  the  order  of  the  things  of 
the  soul,  our  charity,  our  love  of  men,  our  tender 
and  delicate  feeling  for  woman  ;  the  suave  and 
subtle  mysticisn  of  a  Saint  Bernard  or  a  Francis 
d'Assisi,  spring  rather  from  our  ancestors,  possibly 
pagans,  than  from  the  egotist  David,  or  the  exter- 
minator Jehu,  or  the  fanatic  Esdras,  or  the  strict 
observer  Nehemiah. 

Havet  comprehended  all  this  marvelously,  and 
expressed  it  in  perfect  style.  Hfs  book  on  "The 
Origins  of  Christianity,"  which  treats  only  one  side 
of  the  subject,  treats  it  in  a  definitive  manner.  It 
is  an  inflexible  book.  Havet  believes  in  the  true  ; 
he  makes  no  compromises.  Tell  him  that,  in  re- 


242        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

% 

jecting  those  old,  traditional  beliefs,  we  shall  reject 
at  the  same  time,  many  excellent  things ;  that 
these  conventions,  beloved  and  accepted,  are  the 
postulates  of  life,  as  it  were  ;  he  will  tell  you  that 
pretended  social  unity  cannot  be  taken  as  the 
measure  of  the  investigation  of  matters.  The  first 
approach  to  truth  is  rarely  agreeable.  Down  to 
the  present  day,  no  one  has  been  right  with  im- 
punity. The  Greek  who  dared  to  say  that  the  sun 
might  be  as  large. as  the  Peloponnesus  was  treated 
not  only  as  a  madman  but  as  a  malefactor.  The 
moderate  considered  him  a  false,  exaggerated  mind  ; 
he  was  put  to  death,  it  is  said.  That  no  longer 
happens  in  our  day.  Havet  was  reviled  by  all 
routines  in  coalition,  by  the  secret  league  of  all 
weaknesses  ;  he  stood  his  ground,  remained  calm, 
and  ended  by  carrying  the  day.* 

Honor  then,  gentlemen,  to  this  illustrious  friend 
of  the  truth  !  He  was  one  of  the  glories  of  our 
race.  He  felt  all  the  legitimate  needs  of  his  cen- 
tury, without  participating  in  any  of  its  faults. 
His  grand  soul  traversed  the  world  with  no  other 
care  than  that  of  the  truth.  The  seductions,  the 
bewitching  charms  of  probability,  did  not  attract 
him.  He  loved  only  the  certain  ;  miracles  escaped 
his  notice,  he  "beheld  only  that  which  lasts — 
reason.  The  triumph  of  reason  will  be  his  recom- 
pense. A  recompense  !  To  tell  the  truth,  we 
desire  none.  We  have  served  the  truth  under  the 
hard  conditions  imposed  by  fate  upon  the  human 
race.  That  is  our  recompense,  we  desire  no  other. 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  243 

Nil  nisi  te,  domine  ;  nil  nisi  te — Nothing  but  Thee, 
O  Lord  ;  nothing  but  Thee. 

Farewell,  dear  colleague.  You  have  fought  the 
good  fight,  the  fight  for  the  true,  for  reason.  We 
shall  wait  long,  no  doubt,  for  the  triumph  of  our 
cause.  But  we  have  eternity  in  which  to  wait. 
Our  ancestors  of  the  College  of  France,  who 
founded  the  true,  in  the  midst  of  persecution  and 
poverty,  saw  very  different  sights  :  Ramus,  who 
got  himself  killed  for  supporting  the  correct- 
ness of  the  principles  of  our  institute  ;  Denys 
Lambin,  who  beheld  his  fate  written  in  that  of 
Ramus  ;  many  modest  "  professors  of  tongues," 
as  we  were  called,  who  braved  the  haughty  Sor- 
bonne  of  those  days  !  More  happy  than  they, 
we  shall  have  perceived  the  true,  without  suf- 
fering much  for  it.  Moreover,  is  not  your  fate 
worthy  of  envy?  In  a  funeral  inscription  found  in 
Syria,  the  passer-by  is  supposed  to  console  the 
dead  in  these  words  :  "  Courage,  since  you  died 
without  having  to  lament  any  of  your  children, 
and  since  you  leave  in  life  the  wife  whom  you 
loved  ! " 

This  last  happiness  was  not  reserved  to  you  ;  the 
loss  of  a  wife  who  was  worthy  of  you  was  one  of 
the  griefs  which  darkened  your  last  years.  But 
you  leave  behind  you  two  sons  whom  we  love, 
the  heirs  of  your  method  and  of  your  learning. 
You  leave  a  completed  work,  by  which  all  friends 
of  the  true  will  know  how  to  profit.  Courage, 
dear  Havet,  courage  ! 


244       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

SPEECH   AT    THE    FUNERAL  OF  M.  CUVILLIER- 
FLEURY,  OCTOBER    21,     1887. 

How  many  afflictions,  blow  upon  blow,  gen- 
tlemen !  After  the  eminent  moralist,  after  the 
faithful  and  impartial  historian,  to-day  it  is  our 
dean  in  age,  the  critic  of  high  authority,  the  excel- 
lent judge  of  things  of  the  mind,  who  has  been 
taken  from  us.  During  his  long  existence  of 
eighty-five  years,  M.  Cuvillier-Fleury  lived  only  in 
the  love  of  letters,  of  that  repose  of  spirit  which 
they  give,  in  the  faith  in  good  which  they  inspire. 
It  is  the  glory  of  the  ancient  literatures  of  Greece 
and  Rome,  that  they  have  been  able,  through  the 
worships  of  which  they  have  been  the  objects  for 
the  last  four  centuries,  to  furnish  noble  lives 
with  the  very  principle  of  their  nobility — to  have 
concealed,  beneath  the  charms  of  beautiful  lan- 
guage, a  powerful  leaven  of  moral  education  and 
of  sound  philosophy.  Early  devoted  to  the  edu- 
cation for  which  his  precocious  successes  desig- 
nated him,  M.  Cuvillier-Fleury  did  not  ask  of  liter- 
ature only  the  amusement  of  his  hours  of  leisure, 
the  least  vain  of  the  satisfactions  of  vanity.  He 
sought  in  it  the  rule  of  reason  and  the  consolation 
of  life.  And  the  rule  which  he  found  in  it  was 
good.  Cicero,  in  ancient  times,  had  set  the  exam- 
ple of  associating  with  letters  an  elevated  sentiment 
of  nobility  and  uprightness.  Our  ancient  umver- 


ERNEST  RENAN.  245 

sity  had  no  other  creed  than  that.  Those  old  pro- 
fessors were  honest  men.  They  appreciated  all 
the  exercises  of  the  mind  by  the  good  which  they 
did  to  the  soul,  by  the  efficacy  which  they  exhibited 
in  preparing  good  men.  They  formed  few  learned 
men  ;  but  they  did  form  liberal  men,  and  amiable 
men,  which  is  also  something.  An  excellent  school, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  education  !  Education 
is  a  work  of  the  heart,  not  of  erudite  refinements. 
Where  should  we  be,  had  humanity  sought  in  the 
Gospel  only  a  curious  linguistic  document,  instead 
of  seeking  there  the  aliment  of  the  soul  and  the 
book  of  the  heart  ? 

Liberalism  was  the  religion  of  that  excellent 
generation.  M.  Cuvillier-Fleury  and  his  contem- 
poraries had  the  happiness  of  starting  out  with  the 
triumph  of  their  ideas.  The  aspirations  of  their 
youth  were  fully  satisfied  before  the  moment  of 
disappointment  arrived.  They  were  victorious  at 
their  hour,  after  having  deserved  their  victory  ; 
they  beheld  a  liberal  and  enlightened  monarchy,  the 
complete  reign  of  that  of  which  they  had  dreamed. 
When  the  vicissitudes  which  human  things  cannot 
escape  arrived  they  could  say  :  "  I  have  lived." 
They  had  not  to  endure  the  harsh  grief  which 
other  generations  have  suffered,  of  seeing  them- 
selves stifled  before  birth,  of  being  blighted  in 
their  flower.  The  strong  and  brilliant  life  which 
filled  the  interval  from  1830  to  1848  was  lived 
through  entire  by  our  colleague.  Summoned,  by 


246        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

the  dynasty  which  liberal  France  had  imposed  on 
herself,  to  the  most  delicate  functions,  he  showed 
himself  worthy  of  such  a  mark  of  confidence. 
The  culture  of  his  whole  life  had  prepared  him 
admirably  for  this  task.  His  principles  were  so 
well  defined  that  on  the  day  after  the  catastrophe 
which  seemed  to  put  them  in  the  wrong,  they  re- 
mained the  same  that  they  had  been  on  the  day  of 
battle.  "  I  honestly  confess,"  said  our  well-beloved 
colleague,  M.  de  Sacy,  one  of  the  most  worthy 
companions-in-arms  of  M.  Cuvillier-Fleury,  "  I 
have  not  changed.  Far  from  being  shaken  in  my 
convictions,  reflection,  age,  and  experience  have 
confirmed  me  in  them.  I  believe  in  right  and  jus- 
tice, as  I  believed  in  them  in  my  most  artless  youth- 
ful period.  I  am  happy  to  take  up  in  letters,  in 
philosophy,  in  everything  which  pertains  to  the  do- 
main of  conscience  and  pure  thought,  that  princi- 
ple of  liberty  which  circumstances  have  adjourned 
in  politics.  That  is  what  we  shall  try  to  do  in  the 
Journal  des  Dttats.  Possessing  different  shades  of 
taste  and  opinion,  it  is  the  mind  which  will  rally 
us  all  together."  M.  Cuvillier-Fleury  could  have 
said  this  quite  as  well  as  his  friend.  Those  old 
masters,  who  are  decried  nowadays,  were  pro- 
foundly versed  in  the  art  of  educating  souls.  And 
what  pupils  they  formed  !  You  know  one  of  them, 
gentlemen,  since  he  is  our  colleague.  How  is  it 
possible  for  me  not  to  speak  of  him  over  this  grave, 
of  him  whom  M.  Cuvillier-Fleury  called  his  best 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  247 

work,  of  him  who  will  count  his  absence  from  this 
ceremony  as  one  of  the  bitter  consequences  of 
exile,  a  thing  which  is  always  so  bitter  in  itself  ? 
The  perfect  naturalness  of  the  honest  man,  that 
pure  and  sincere  manner  of  writing,  that  passionate 
sentiment  for  France  and  all  her  glories,  that 
amenity,  that  delicate  taste  of  literary  knowledge, 
of  those  qualities,  M.  le  Due  D'Aumale  desired 
that  a  portion  of  all  this  should  be  attributed  to  his 
preceptor.  Let  it  be  according  to  his  will  !  What 
more  touching,  more  honorable  for  both,  than  this 
sentiment  of  exquisite  friendship  which  the  master 
felt  for  his  pupil  and  the  pupil  for  his  master? 
One  of  the  most  beautiful  spectacles  of  our  century 
has  been  furnished  by  this  esteem,  this  reciprocal 
respect,  which  carry  us  back  to  the  fine  days  of 
Quintilian,  as  Rollin  understood  him  :  the  pupil 
recognizing  the  fact  that  he  owed  to  his  master  the 
notion  of  the  serious  in  life  ;  the  master,  under  the 
appearance  of  oratorical  preoccupation  solely,  being 
dominated  by  anxiety  for  uprightness  and  honesty. 
Oh,  great  and  holy  school  of  educators,  I  fear  that 
the  pedantic  methods  of  modern  pedagogy  will  find 
it  difficult  to  fill  your  place. 

And,  when  M.  Cuvillier-FIeury  had  completed 
his  task  of  educator,  how  well  he  understood  the 
art  of  continuing  it,  in  the  view  of  the  literary  pub- 
lic, by  those  articles  in  the  "  Miscellanies  "  of  the 
Journal  des  Debats,  which  reserved  for  initiated 
readers  such  delicate  enjoyment  and  such  useful 


248       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

guidance  !  Our  colleague's  criticism  was  a  perpet- 
ual lesson  in  good  sense.  It  was  the  criticism  of 
an  honest  man,  founded  upon  rectitude  of  judg- 
ment, the  taste  for  naturalness  in  everything,  with 
extreme  indulgence  for  whatever  departed  from 
his  rule,  and  a  secret  taste  for  the  qualities  which 
were  not  those  that  he  recommended.  Here,  again, 
Quintilian  was  his  model,  and  the  latter's  dulcia 
vitia,  which  the  latter  found  in  Seneca,  bear  a 
strong  resemblance  to  the  brilliant  defects  which 
our  colleague  blamed,  while  forced,  at  times,  to 
love  them. 

He  loved  ardently  that  which  he  believed  to  be 
true.  He  served  it  with  speech  as  well  as  with  pen. 
His  conversation  was  very  much  alive  ;  he  took 
great  pains  with  it,  for  it  was  one  means  of  accent- 
uating the  conviction  which  he  bore  within  him. 
Oh  !  what  a  good  house  the  Journal  des  Dtiats 
was  then,  and  what  a  memory  we  retain  of  those 
amiable  jousts  of  words,  in  which  M.  de  Sacy,  and 
the  friend  who  goes  to-day  to  join  him,  indulged  in 
a  combat  of  wit,  spirit,  and  good  nature  !  At  the 
Academy  the  tourney  began  again,  and  it  was  in- 
offensive ;  for  both  broke  lances  in  the  same  cause. 
Everything  which  was  good,  noble,  generous,  made 
their  hearts  vibrate.  Their  patriotism  was  pure  as 
the  thought  of  a  child.  Above  all,  they  beheld 
France  :  they  believed  in  her,  they  adored  her. 
Poor  France  !  It  is  impossible  that  she  should 
perish  ;  she  has  been  too  much  beloved  ! 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  249 

The  literary  faith  which  animated  M.  Cuvillier- 
Fleury  sustained  him  to  the  end.  The  gift  of  long 
life  was  accorded  to  him,  his  appetite  for  beautiful 
things  and  his  taste  for  society  suffered  cruel  re- 
verses ;  an  almost  complete  blindness  separated 
him  partly  from  life — the  life  which  he  loved  so  well. 
He  supported  this  cruel  trial  with  admirable 
courage.  His  solitude,  or,  rather,  his  foretaste  of 
the  eternal  shadows,  was,  moreover,  greatly 
softened.  The  noble  and  devoted  companion  of 
his  life  redoubled  the  miracles  of  vigilant  tender- 
ness with  which  she  surrounded  him,  and  calmed 
his  sufferings,  as  has  been  very  well  said,  by  the 
graces  of  her  mind  and  the  inexhaustible  delicacies 
of  her  heart. 

Farewell,  dear  colleague  and  friend.  1  recall  that 
one  day  I  was  attacked  in  the  Ddbats,  I  do  not 
know  very  well  why — perhaps  rightly.  I  still  hear 
you  say  in  an  aside  to  M.  de  Sacy  :  "  We  must  up- 
hold our  young  colleague."  The  young  colleague, 
dear  master,  will  soon  follow  you,  perhaps.  Life  is 
only  a  shadow  ;  one  gives  to  that  shadow  a  certain 
reality  by  devoting  one's  self,  as  you  have  done,  to 
the  persistent  seeking  for  that  which  is  straight- 
forward, simple,  just,  and  pure. 


250        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

SPEECH  DELIVERED  AT  THE  INAUGURATION 
OF  THE  STATUE  OF  M.  ABOUT,  DECEMBER 
20,  1887. 

HERE,  indeed,  gentlemen,  are  those  features 
which  we  loved  !  Here  is  the  smile  which  fluttered 
upon  the  lips  of  our  colleague,  when  he  was  writ- 
ing all  those  charming  works  ;  here  is  that  open 
countenance,  on  which  was  to  be  read,  at  the  first 
glance,  the  philosophy,  at  once  ironical  and  amiable, 
which  sustained  him  in  his  career  of  ardent  activity. 
What  a  rich  nature,  gentlemen,  what  a  superabund- 
ance of  vigor  !  What  a  joy  it  was  for  us,  during 
those  years  of  sadness  which  marked  the  middle  of 
our  century,  to  behold  this  brilliant  young  man 
enter  the  lists  of  the  great  battles,  this  true  son  of 
Voltaire,  in  whom  the  old  French  spirit,  that  which, 
though  conquered,  always  comes  to  life  again, 
seemed  to  jeer  merrily  at  those  who  had  believed 
it  to  be  dead,  and  to  cry  :  "  I  still  live  !  "  Yes, 
among  the  many  illustrious  newcomers  in  the  field, 
thanks  to  whom  our  country,  humiliated  by  so 
many  badly  concerted  revolutions  and  blind  re- 
actions, was  able  to  respond,  after  1858,  to  the 
challenges  which  were  addressed  to  her,  About 
was  the  one  who  continued  our  ancient  tradition 
with  the  least  alloy.  He  possessed  the  dominat- 
ing quality  of  the  French  mind,  honest  straight- 
forwardness, clearness.  Voltaire  was,  above  all 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  251 

things,  an  honest  mind  ;  About  was  so,  also,  in  the 
highest  degree.  To  demand  of  such  men  that 
they  shall  eternally  wear  a  mask  upon  their  faces, 
accept  with  docility  the  conventions,  often  puerile, 
submission  to  which  is  but  a  small  merit  in  the 
majority  of  people,  is  to  demand  of  the  light  that 
it  shall  not  proceed  in  a  straight  line.  The  atmos- 
phere in  which  they  dwell  is  absolutely  transparent ; 
mvstery  has  no  meaning  for  them  ;  like  the  electric 
light,  they  search  all  the  crannies  and  render  false- 
hood, difficult  ;  it  is  impossible  for  them  not  to 
stigmatize  the  absurdities  which  they  perceive. 

Is  this  egotism,  coldness  ?  Oh,  no  !  certainly 
not.  These  pitiless  adversaries  of  falseness  and 
subdued  lights  love  the  truth.  Hypocrisy  inspires 
in  them  a  real  nausea  ;  dogmas  which  flee  the  light 
irritate  them.  To  every  proposition  to  dissimulate 
what  they  think  they  reply  :  "  What  is  the  use  of 
living  if  one  has  no  longer  any  cause  for  living?  " 

A  strong  love,  moreover,  a  dominating  love  was 
the  moral  principle  of  that  soul  which  superficial 
critics  have  characterized  as  frivolous.  It  was  the 
love  of  this  poor  France,  to  whom  he  owed  the  best 
that  was  in  him.  The  parties  which  succeeded 
each  other  in  power,  with  disheartening  rapidity, 
would  have  liked  to  have  him  refuse  to  survive 
them,  in  order  that  he  might  remain  faithful  to 
them.  But  France  still  existed  for  him,  after  the 
ruin  of  parties.  His  patriotism  contrived  to  be 
both  eloquent  and  courageous  in  the  days  of  trial. 


252        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

France  was  the  fairy  who  had  endowed  him,  who 
had  crowned  him,  so  long  as  it  was  in  her  power  to 
confer  crowns.  When  she  had  no  longer  anything 
to  distribute  to  those  who  loved  her,  except  'signs 
of  mourning,  About  vowed  himself  to  a  sadness 
for  which  he  refused  to  be  consoled.  He  conceived 
suspicions  even  of  his  talent,  which  might  have 
served  to  distract  him.  The  dainty  writer  of  for- 
mer days  became  a  fighter  of  journalistic  battles. 
He  grew  bitter,  sometimes  misunderstood  his 
friends,  irritated  his  enemies. 

Wrath  is  a  bad  councilor,  gentlemen,  even  when 
it  is  most  just.  The  worst  feature  in  the  condition 
of  the  conquered  is,  that  his  situation  condemns 
him  to  deceive  himself.  He  becomes  exacting 
suspicious,  susceptible.  If  About  sometimes  allowed 
himself  to  be  led  astray  by  false  judgments  of  this 
sort  he  was  himself  their  chief  victim.  Ah  !  great 
asperity  of  our  time!  Adversaries  rend  each 
other,  scorn  each  other.  Judging  from  their 
extreme  severity  toward  each  other,  one  would  be- 
lieve that  they  are  virtuous,  and,  nevertheless,  if  a 
true  moral  sentiment  inspired  their  attacks,  they 
would  be  indulgent.  Oh  !  when  shall  we  behold  a 
temple  erected  to  reciprocal  pardon  and  oblivion  ? 
To  tell  the  truth,  I  fear  that  the  temple  of  my 
dreams  is  the  cemetery.  It  is  only  there  that  peace, 
which  is,  after  all,  only  a  chimera,  becomes  a 
reality.  I  think  that  we  shall  soon  say,  with  Eccle- 
siastes  :  "  Happy  are  the  dead  !  " 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  253 

Our  colleague  did  not  receive  even  that  rec- 
ompense which  old  fighters  generally  enjoy,  of 
looking  on,  tranquilly,  toward  the  end  of  their 
lives,  at  the  battles  of  others.  At  the  moment 
when  he  was  about  to  take  possession  of  the  chair 
to  which  your  votes  had  called  him,  death  came  to 
take  him.  We  did  not  have  the  joy  of  seeing  him 
sit  among  us.  The  battle  of  life  has  assumed 
such  asperity  in  our  day  that  we  no  longer  pick 
up  the  dead.  Thanks  to  you,  gentlemen,  thanks 
to  the  talent  of  the  artist,  whose  work  has  just 
been  revealed  to  you,  the  future  will  salute,  in  this 
place,  the  true  image  of  one  of  the  men  who  have 
added  the  most,  in  our  epoch,  to  that  mass  of 
reason  which,  although  still  feeble,  is  augmented 
from  century  to  century  by  the  efforts  of  all  great 
souls  and  all  good  spirits.  Behind  the  clouds 
which  gather  there  is  still  a  blue  sky,  there  are 
still  warm  rays.  When  the  hour  of  impartiality 
shall  have  arrived,  many  adversaries  will  recognize 
the  fact  that  they  have  toiled  at  the  same  task 
without  knowing  it.  Then  will  all  proclaim  that 
About  was  one  of  those  who  have  loved  the  most, 
at  a  critical  hour,  if  ever  there  was  one,  both 
progress  and  liberty. 


254       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 


LETTER    TO    M.   GUSTAVE    FLAUBEBT  ON    THE 
"  TEMPTATION  OF  SAINT  ANTHONY."* 

VENICE,  September  8,  1874. 
My  Dear  Friend:  Yesterday,  at  the  Labbia 
palace,  Tiepolo's  scenes  from  the  life  of  Cleopatra 
made  me  think  of  your  "  Temptation  of  St. 
Anthony,"  which  has  been  so  unjustly  criticised. 
Three  years  ago,  my  beloved  and  regretted  Arnold 
made  me  understand  the  brilliancy,  life,  color,  and 
individual  originality  of  these  frescoes.  Did  Tie- 
polo  intend  to  give  a  lesson  in  history,  a  lesson 
in  morals,  a  lesson  in  archaeology,  or  a  lesson  in 
politics  ?  Did  he  undertake  to  raise  or  lower 
Antony  and  Cleopatra  ?  Was  he  accused  of  hav- 
ing failed  in  respect  for  the  royal  majesty,  which 
was  compromised  in  a  festival  of  equivocal  appear- 
ance ?  No  ;  he  opened  to  the  imagination  a  bril- 
liant dream.  That  was  enough  ;  neither  archae- 
ologist nor  moralist,  neither  historian  nor  pol- 
itician, have  any  fault  to  find.  Nothing  is  bad 
in  art,  save  that  which  has  neither  style  nor  con- 
struction : 

Pictoribus  atque  poetis 
Quidlibet  audiendi  semper  fuit  aequa  potestas.f 

People   no   longer  understand    it  in    that  way. 
The  weakening  of  the  imagination  tends  to  create 

*  This  article  has  never  been  published, 
f  Painters  and  poets  have  always  possessed  equal  powers  of 
making  themselves  heard. 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  255 

for  the  written,  in  comparison  with  the  painted, 
work  an  inequality  of  treatment  which  we  cannot 
accept.  Callot  and  Teniers  did  what  you  have 
done  ;  they  hesitated  at  nothing,  and  no  one 
blamed  them.  The  "Temptations  "  of  Callot  and 
Teniers  teach  nothing  in  the  line  of  history,  prove 
nothing  in  the  department  of  morals,  refute  noth- 
ing in  politics.  They  did  not  try  to  preach,  to 
improve,  to  instruct,  any  more  than  you.  Their 
aim  was  not,  any  more  than  yours  has  been,  to 
prove  that  profound  faith  triumphs  over  the  most 
violent  assaults.  They  were  not  reproached  with 
being  bad  painters  of  saints,  with  having  dis- 
honored St.  Anthony.  Callot  and  Teniers  are 
jesters.  You  are  fantastic.  The  one  should  be  as 
much  permitted  as  the  other  !  "  A  Midsummer- 
night's  Dream  "  has  its  rights,  by  the  side  of  the 
Gallic  farce  and  the  laughter  of  Voltaire,  which 
have  their  rights  also.  If  I  had  still  been  writing 
for  the  papers  when  your  book  appeared,  I  should 
have  tried  to  controvert  these  errors.  One  person 
insisted  that  you  had  undertaken  to  write  a  history 
of  gnosticism,  and  thought  that  a  good  summary 
would  have  been  of  more  value ;  another  con- 
sidered that  you  had  given  a  bad  rendering  of 
St.  Anthony's  biography  ;  one  declared  that 
your  secret  idea  had  been  to  inculcate  a  system  of 
philosophy.  In  our  land  people  insist  that  a  book 
shall  instruct,  edify,  or  amuse  ....  really  amuse, 
cause  laughter.  The  thing  which,  above  all  others, 


256       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

is  amusing  and  philosophical,  the  contemplation 
of  reality,  the  spectroscopy  of  the  universe,  is  but 
little  understood.  People  will  not  admit  that  the 
nightmare  has  a  charm  of  its  own.  They  grant 
it  in  painting;  they  admit  "Salome"  or  "The 
Executioners  "  of  Henri  Regnault,  works  which, 
assuredly,  teach  nothing  whatever,  and  which  do 
not  awaken  any  agreeable  image.  How  much 
nearer  right  was  Boileau,  that  great  artist  in  form  : 

II  n'est  pas  de  serpent  ni  de  monstre  odieux 
Qui,  par  1'art  imite,  ne  puisse  plaire  aux  yeux.* 

That  great  consoler  of  life,  imagination,  has  one 
special  privilege,  which  makes  of  it,  all  things  con- 
sidered, the  most  precious  of  gifts  ;  it  is  that  its 
sufferings  are  pleasures.  With  it  everything  is 
profit.  It  is  the  base  of  the  soul's  health,  the 
essential  condition  of  gayety.  It  makes  us  enjoy 
the  folly  of  fools  and  the  wisdom  of  sages.  The 
Greeks  took  pleasure  in  the  cave  of  Trophonius, 
evidently,  since  they  resorted  thither.  If  the 
nocturnal  revels  were  true,  I  do  not  say  that  I 
should  care  to  go  there  ;  that  is  contrary  to  the 
rules  of  conduct  which  I  have  imposed  upon 
myself,  but  I  should  desire  that  there  should  be 
people  who  would  go  there,  and  I  would  read  then 
with  pleasure  the  vividly  colored  books  which  they 
would  make  out  of  it. 

*  There  is  no  serpent  nor  odious  monster  which  may  not 
please  the' eyes  when  imitated  by  art. 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  257 

People  forget  that  one-half  of  Greek  literature, 
that  marvel,  that  rule  of  the  beautiful,  when  it  is 
understood,  is  only  chased  work  and  imagination. 
What  does  an  idyl  of  Theocritus  prove  ?  What 
aim  did  that  charming  poet  propose  to  himself, 
three-quarters  of  the  time  ?  The  aim  that  our 
friend  Theophile  Gautier  had  ;  to  find  a  theme 
with  fine  images,  with  adorably  made  verses.  In 
the  first  idyl,  thirty-five  verses  are  consecrated  to 
the  description  of  a  porringer  with  a  realism  which 
outdoes  anything  that  the  school  of  our  day 
has  ever  dared  attempt.  Has  Bion's  "  Tombeau 
d'Adonis"any  object,  moral,  historical,  or  politi- 
cal ?  And  the  "  Metamorphoses  "  of  Ovid,  that  de- 
licious series  of  noble  and  enchanting  images,  pro- 
foundly connected  with  nature,  each  one  of  which 
evokes  a  thousand  questions,  without  solving  them 
.  .  .  .  I  really  believe  that,  if  a  poet  incur  day  were 
to  make  a  masterpiece  of  this  sort,  there  would  be 
found  critics  to  say  to  him  :  "  Capricious  childish- 
ness, what  do  you  want  with  us!"  Alas!  our 
public  is  like  one  of  those  of  which  your  Apol- 
lonius  speaks  :  "  It  believes,  like  a  brute,  in  the 
reality  of  things."  When  an  art  shall  have  been 
constructed  upon  that  basis,  I  shall  believe  ;  until 
then,  it  will  remain  for  me  the  reasoning  of  Blem- 
myes,  of  pygmies,  of  sciapods.  Do  you  know  what 
M.  Hugo  thinks  of  your  book  ?  It  is  said  that,  in 
addition  to  his  genius,  he  possesses  remarkable 
discernment  in  matters  of  taste. 


25          RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

Because  the  procession  of  the  dreams  of  humanity 
resembles  a  masquerade,  at  times,  that  is  no  reason 
for  interdicting  its  presentation.  Poor  humanity  ! 
Oh  !  the  further  I  go,  the  more  I  love  it,  and  the 
more  esteem  I  feel  for  it.  How  it  toils  !  Setting 
out  from  such  a  depth,  what  great  or  charming 
things  it  has  drawn  from  its  bosom  !  "  Oh  !  what 
a  good  animal  man  is  !  "  Among  all  these  sacred 
follies,  there  is  not  one  which  does  not  possess  its 
touching  side,  which  does  not  redeem  our  race  and 
the  spirits  which  it  bears.  Even  irony  is  a  cult ; 
comedy  is  the  act  of  an  aristocrat,  which  Louis  XIV., 
great  centuries,  great  peoples,  alone  can  permit 
themselves.  What  !  it  pleases  this  noble,  so  tried 
by  fate,  this  poor  man  so  battered  by  storms,  to  turn 
his  attention  for  a  moment  from  his  destiny,  to 
amuse  himself  with  a  review  of  his  chimeras,  to 
laugh  for  an  hour,  before  he  resumes  his  weeping, 
and  people  consider  him  wicked  !  I  persist  in  be- 
lieving that  this  martyr  suffers  for  something,  that 
he  will  have  his  recompense  some  day.  But  every- 
one has  his  hours  of  doubt  ;  at  those  hours,  noth- 
ing consoles  him  but  form  and  color.  And  this 
is  not  a  vain  debauch.  The  imagination  has  its 
own  philosophy.  Ask  Goethe,  ask  Darwin. 
Morphology  is  everything,  and  everything  will  be 
brought  back  to  it. 

Why  have  we  not  Sainte-Beuve  ?  He  criticised 
but  he  understood.  Do  you  remember  our  dinners 
with  that  great  friend  whose  loss  leaves  me  in  the 


ERNEST  REMAN;  25$ 

same  literary  void  as  though  he  had  carried  half 
of  the  public  with  him  to  the  tomb  ?  I  have  always 
maintained,  you  know,  that  color  is  only  the  ac- 
cessory, that  it  serves  to  heighten  a  principal  fact, 
which  ordinarily  ought  to  be  of  the  moral  order. 
But  there  is  no  absolute  rule.  Lucian,  Apuleius, 
and  even  that  jester  Philostratus,  the  Mery  of  antiq- 
uity, must  not  be  dismissed.  Everything  that  is 
not  common  should  be  received  with  kindness. 
Plebeian  platitude  alone,  in  art,  has  anything  im- 
moral about  it. 

What  an  error  to  call  the  exercise  of  our  natural 
faculties  a  malady  !  It  is  mediocrity  which  is 
scrofulous  and  sickly.  Have  you  noticed  that  the 
audacious  and  narrow-minded  spirits  which  our 
country  has  lost  have  not  acquired  a  single  new 
idea  since  ?  The  work  of  the  imagination  is 
healthy,  as  it  is  healthy  for  a  country  to  have 
good  soldiers,  good  painters,  good  philologists, 
good  workers  of  every  sort.  People  understood 
this  forty  years  ago.  But  you  have  hit  upon  a  bad 
time.  At  the  present  moment,  parties  appreciate 
us  in  proportion  to  the  aid  which  we  afford  them. 
You  present  to  such  a  public  a  work  which  has 
been  long  studied  ;  each  one  asks  himself  in  what 
way  you  serve  his  policy.  Poor  country  !  That 
has  happened  to  it  which  happened  to  your  Cato- 
blepas,  who  devoured  his  own  paws,  one  day, 
without  noticing  it. 

You  are  credited   with  propagandist  intentions 


260       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS* OF 

while  you  desire  but  one  thing  :  to  charm,  to  strike, 
to  touch,  to  move.  You  offer  to  the  delicate  a  per- 
fume to  smell ;  the  dullards  have  swallowed  it  in 
gulps.  That  is  no  fault  of  yours.  People  have 
not  comprehended  your  admirable  conclusion,  the 
profoundly  conceived  role  of  Hilarion — science 
slowly  developing  its  mortal  batteries — your 
adorable  Ebionites,  your  Buddha,  your  Cannes, 
the  discourse  of  Isis,  the  philosophical  dialogue  of 
Anthony  upon  Satan's  shoulders.  This  enchants 
me,  and  I  am  not  the  only  one  to  be  enchanted  ; 
some  Strasburg  professors  to  whom  I  lent  your 
book  were  delighted  with  it.  We  may  be  chal- 
lenged, it  is  true  ;  in  regard  to  you  we  stand,  some- 
what in  the  position  of  a  chemist  or  a  physician, 
to  whom  a  young  and  charming  woman  speaks  of 
his  works.  Cur  ideas,  returning  to  us  clothed  in 
your  rich  fancy,  charm  us.  You  are  considered  to 
be  exaggerated  in  many  cases  where  you  are  only 
true.  Your  impression  of  the  desert  of  Libya  is 
just.  Even  he  who  has  been  only  to  Cairo  and 
has  seen  the  tombs  of  the  Caliphs,  almost  buried 
in  the  sand,  has  understood  this  sort  of  beauty. 
It  is  not  the  only  one,  and  the  public  must  not  be 
confined  to  it.  I  confess  to  you,  timidly,  that 
more  than  once,  in  Syria,  in  Egypt,  I  dreamed  of  a 
pretty  house  in  the  valley  of  the  Auge,  tapestried 
with  Bengal  roses,  of  a  meadow  on  the  banks  of 
the  Oise,  of  a  village  in  Brittany  at  the  hour  when 
the  evening  Angelus  is  sounding.  But  we  must  not 
tear  from  the  aesthetic  lyre  a  single  one  of  its 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  261 

cords.  It  is  when  they  all  vibrate  in  unison  that 
they  make  the  full  accord  which  is  called  a  fine 
century. 

And,  surely,  that  which  has  been  the  least 
understood  is  your  indifference  to  popular  success. 
How  many  men  besides  yourself,  after  "  Madame 
Bovary,"  would  have  made  endless  rehearsals  of  the 
work  which  the  public  had  accepted.  You  have 
fled  to  the  other  pole,  from  Normandy  to  the 
desert.  Aristocrat  that  you  are,  you  feared  to 
have  perpetrated  some  folly,  when  you  saw  that 
you  amused  the  public.  Wrath  has  taken  posses- 
sion of  you  ;  heroic  in  everything,  you  have  taken 
a  bludgeon  to  put  to  flight  your  plebeian  admirers. 
I  understand  it ;  but  now  you  must  take  your 
revenge.  Return  to  that  which  captivates  all  the 
world.  You  have  painted  the  repulsive  and  the 
strange  in  a  masterly  manner.  Sat prata  biberunt. 
A  person  who  is  very  fond  of  you  said  to  me,  a 
few  months  ago,  how  greatly  he  desired  to  see  you 
make  a  book  which  should  be  the  whole  of  your- 
self, which  should  excite  men  to  nobleness,  to 
virtue.  Keep  your  foundations  ;  they  are  admi- 
rable ;  but  make  them  serve  some  purpose.  Add  a 
trifle  ;  place  a  flower  on  these  manure-heaps,  as 
you  did  in  "  Madame  Bovary."  The  good  and  the 
beautiful  exist,  as  well  as  the  evil  and  the  ugly*. 
You  will  be  able  to  paint  them  admirably  when  you 
wish  it. 

We  leave  in  a  few  days  for  Bologna  and  Parma. 
Believe  in  my  sincere  friendship. 


262        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

HENRI    FREDERIC    AMIEL. 
I. 

WE  must  feel  infinitely  grateful  to  the  persons 
who,  moved  by  a  sentiment  of  pious  friendship, 
have  undertaken  the  difficult  task  of  introducing 
Henri  Frederic  Amiel  to  the  public,  which  occupied 
the  mind  of  this  distinguished  thinker  to  a  large 
extent,  but  which  a  certain  timidity  prevented  his 
addressing  directly.  Amiel's  intellectual  situation 
is  one  of  the  most  peculiar  of  our  times ;  his  life 
exhibits  admirably  several  of  the  maladies  which 
are  at  work  upon  our  epoch.  Although  possessed 
of  really  eminent  philosophical  aptitudes,  Amiel 
arrived  only  at  sadness  ;  gifted  with  true  literary 
qualities,  he  was  not  able  to  give  to  his  ideas  that 
form  which  commands  respect.  A  perfectly  up- 
right man,  he  lacked  firm  design  in  the  control  of 
his  life.  Moralists  and  publicists  of  the  second 
rank  have  been  more  remarked  than  he  ;  writers  a 
hundred  times  less  learned  have  left  their  impress 
on  our  literary  history  ;  a  multitude  of  mediocre 
natures  have,  perhaps,  rendered  more  services  to 
the  cause  of  the  true  and  the  good  than  this  pas- 
sionate friend  of  all  that  is  ideal. 

If  Amiel  had  been  one  of  that  troop,  assuredly 
the  best  among  the  elect,  which  has  taken  for  its 
motto  " ama  nesciri"  (love  to  be  unknown),  there 
would  be  nothing  to  say.  It  is  an  accepted  prin- 


ERNEST  RENAN.  263 

ciple  among  persons  experienced  in  criticism  that 
literature  impairs  that  which  it  touches  ;  that  the 
most  beautiful  sentiments  will  always  remain  un- 
known ;  that  the  most  true  and  vigorous  ideas  that 
have  ever  been  entertained  with  regard  to  the 
universe  have  remained  unpublished,  or,  to  put 
it  more  accurately,  unexpressed.  God  and  his 
angels,  as  the  phrase  used  to  run,  have  enjoyed 
the  privilege  of  the  only  fine  spectacles  in  the 
moral  and  intellectual  order ;  I  mean  those  of 
meditations  and  sentiments  produced  in  the  bosom 
of  an  absolute  objectivity,  without  being  spoiled  by 
the  interested  second  thought  of  how  they  may  be 
put  to  profit.  The  man  who  is  virtuous  in  silence, 
the  grand  heart  which  makes  no  parade  of  its 
heroism,  the  great  mind  which  yields  up  its  lofty 
views  only  when  forced  to  it,  so  to  speak,  are 
superior  to  the  artisan  in  words,  engrossed  in  the 
idea  of  giving  a  form  to  opinions  which,  as  likely 
as  not,  he  does  not  cherish  very  deeply.  Amiel, 
though  very  virtuous,  had  not  reached  the  degree 
of  disinterestedness  of  those  ascetics  who  take  a 
vow  of  perpetual  silence.  He  was  not  exempt 
from  the  great  malady  of  our  day,  which  is  the 
literary  malady — the  false  idea  that  thought  and 
sentiment  exist  for  the  purpose  of  being  expressed, 
which  turns  one  aside  from  loving  life  for  itself, 
and  causes  an  exaggerated  value  to  be  placed  on 
talent.  Amiel  would  have  liked  to  produce,  but 
he  was  thoroughly  conscious  that  he  was  not  a 


264       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

writer.  According  to  the  vulgar  expression  which 
a  certain  style  of  literature  has  brought  into  fashion, 
he  is  a  rate — a  flash-in-the-pan — because  he  does 
not  know  how  to  attach  the  public  to  the  order  of 
ideas  which  he  has  chosen  ;  but  he  is  a  flash-in-the- 
pan  who  is  conscious  of  his  defects,  who  adores 
that  which  he  does  not  possess  himself,  and  eats 
his  heart  out  with  regret.  He  does  not  see  with 
sufficient  distinctness  that,  without  being  a  writer, 
one  can  do  things  of  the  highest  rank,  and  he  falls 
back  upon  the  falsest  of  compromises — I  mean 
upon  the  private  journal,  detached  thoughts, 
memoirs  destined  for  himself  alone. 

This  is  a  dangerous,  sometimes  an  unhealthy 
fashion — a  fashion  which  is  adopted  ordinarily  by 
those  who  have  no  other,  and  upon  which  must 
rest,  unless  in  the  case  of  exceptional  success, 
a  priori  a  certain  condemnation.  The  man  who 
has  the  time  to  write  a  private  journal  seems  to  us 
not  to  have  comprehended  how  vast  the  world  is. 
The  extent  of  things  to  be  known  is  immense.  The 
history  of  humanity  is  barely  begun  ;  the  study  of 
nature  contains  in  reserve  discoveries  which  it  is 
absolutely  impossible  to  foresee.  How  can  a  man, 
in  the  presence  of  so  colossal  a  task,  pause  to  devour 
himself,  to  doubt  life  ?  It  is  far  better  to  take  his 
mattock  and  set  to  work.  The  day  when  it  will 
be  permissible  to  loiter  over  the  exercises  of  a  dis- 
couraged thought,  will  be  that  on  which  we  shall 
begin  to  perceive  the  fact  that  there  is  a  limit  to 


ERNEST  RENAN.  265 

the  matter  to  be  learned.  Now,  supposing  that,  in 
the  course  of  centuries,  such  a  limit  should  be 
perceived  for  history,  it  will  never  be  perceived  for 
nature.  But  the  problems  which  appear  com- 
pletely barred,  like  those  of  physical  astronomy, 
are  susceptible  of  being  suddenly  shifted  in  an 
unforeseen  manner.  While  working  on  the  for- 
mulas, ever  more  and  more  comprehensive,  acquired 
by  preceding  scientific  generations,  physics,  chem- 
istry, biology  have  before  them  a  programme 
which  enlarges  in  proportion  as  they  advance.  My 
friend  M.  Berthelot  would  have  time  to  occupy 
himself  during  hundreds  of  consecutive  lives  with- 
out  ever  writing  a  word  about  himself.  I  calculate 
that  I  should  require  five  hundred  years  to  exhaust 
the  compass  of  Semitic  studies  as  I  understand 
them  ;  and  if  the  taste  for  them  should  ever  weaken 
in  me,  I  would  learn  Chinese ;  that  new  world, 
still  awaiting  criticism  almost  intact,  would  whet 
my  appetite  for  an  indefinite  period.  Subjective 
skepticism,  doubt  as  to  the  legitimacy  of  our  facul- 
ties, is  the  birdlime  in  which  the  natures  attacked 
by  the  malady  of  scruple  are  caught.  Apprehen- 
sions of  this  sort  always  come  from  a  certain 
indolence  of  mind.  He  who  thirsts  for  reality  is 
'drawn  out  of  himself.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  a 
genius  like  M.  Victor  Hugo  never  had  the  leisure 
to  scrutinize  himself.  When  one  is  powerfully 
attracted  by  things,  one  is  sure  that  it  is  they  and 
not  a  vain  phantasmagoria  which  one  is  clasping. 


266       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

Amiel  has  not  that  love  for  the  universe  which 
causes  one  to  have  no  eyes  for  anything  else.  For 
more  than  thirty  years  he  never  let  a  day  pass 
without  observing  himself  and  describing  his  state 
of  soul ;  he  recorded  his  reflections  in  large  quarto 
notebooks  which,  when  put  together,  made  a  total 
of  more  than  sixteen  thousand  pages.  Felix  culpa .' 
From  this  undigested  mass,  Amiel's  friends — oh, 
what  a  good  thing  it  is  to  leave  true  friends  behind 
one  ! — have  culled  two  volumes  of  thoughts  which 
offer  us,  without  any  sacrifice  made  to  the  work  of 
art,  the  perfect  mirror  of  one  of  the  most  upright 
of  modern  consciences,  arrived  at  the  highest 
degree  of  culture,  and  at  the  same  time  a  finished 
picture  of  the  sufferings  of  a  sterile  genius.  These 
twp  volumes  may  certainly  be  reckoned  among  the 
most  interesting  philosophical  writings  which  have 
appeared  in  recent  years.  Amiel's  defects,  in  fact, 
are  as  striking  as  possible.  He  himself  takes 
pleasure  in  emphasizing  them  and  placing  them  in 
prominent  positions  ;  but  there  is  not  a  single  one 
of  them  which  does  not  proceed  from  an  excess  of 
nobility  and  an  elevated  principle.  "  I  insist  ob- 
stinately on  doing  nothing  which  can  please  me. 
serve  me,  or  aid  me.  My  passion  is  to  injure  my 
own  interests,  to  set  good  sense  at  defiance,  to  be 

headstrong  to  my  own  detriment I  am 

ashamed  of  my  interests,  as  of  an  ignoble  and 
servile  motive." 

"What  a  singular  nature,"  he  exclaims,  "and 


ERNEST  RENAN.  267 

what  an  eccentric  propensity  !  Not  to  dare  to 
enjoy  artlessly,  without  scruple,  and  to  withdraw 
from  the  table  for  fear  the  repast  should  come  to 
an  end."  "  As  soon  as  a  thing  attracts  me,"  he 
says  again,  "  I  turn  away  my  head,  or,  rather,  I  can 
neither  accustom  myself  to  insufficiency,  nor  find 
anything  which  will  satisfy  my  aspirations.  The 
real  disgusts  me,  and  I  do  not  find  the  ideal." 
That  is  the  truth.  His  impotence  comes  from  his 
being  too  perfect.  "  In  love,"  says  M.  Scherer, 
"  he  recoiled  before  avowal  ;  in  literature,  he  re- 
coiled before  a  work."  One  cannot  be  a  man  of 
letters  without  some  defect.  The  perfect  man, 
such  as  Amiel  dreamt  of,  would  have  no  talent. 
Talent  is  a  petty  vice,  of  which  a  saint  should  cure 
himself  first  of  all. 

Amiel's  sterility  springs  from  another  cause  :  the 
too  great  diversity  of  his  intellectual  and  moral 
origins.  Variety,  in  this  line,  is  an  excellent 
thing;  but  the  two  elements  must  not  neutralize 
each  other.  One  must  dominate,  and  the  rest 
must  be  only  accessory.  Amiel  is  too  hybrid  to 
be  fruitful.  The  excellent  Germanic  education 
which  he  received  was  constantly  at  war  with  other 
parts  of  his  nature.  He  laid  the  blame  upon  the 
language.*  He  thought  that  French  was  the  cause 
of  the  difficulty  which  he  found  in  expressing  his 
thought.  A  profound  error.  "  The  French  lan- 
guage," he  says,  "can  express  nothing  nascent  in 
the  germ.  It  paints  only  effects,  results,  the  caput 
*  Vol.  i,  pp.  83-84  ;  vol.  ii,  p.  184. 


268       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

mortuum  (the  death's  head),  but  not  the  cause,  the 
movement,  the  force,  the  future  of  any  phenome- 
non whatever.  It  is  analytical  and  descriptive  ; 
but  it  does  not  help  one  to  understand  anything, 
for  it  does  not  make  one  see  the  beginnings  and  for- 
mation out  of  nothing."  If  Amiel  had  been  better 
acquainted  with  the  language  in  which  he  habitually 
wrote,  he  would  have  seen  that  French  suffices  for 
the  expression  of  every  thought — even  of  thoughts 
the  most  foreign  to  its  ancient  genius — and  that  if, 
in  the  transfusion,  it  allows  some  details  to  escape, 
precisely  these  details  were  after-growths  which 
prevented  the  new  thought  from  assuming  a  uni- 
versal character.  Amiel  was  not  a  perfect  master 
of  his  instrument.  .Not  knowing  all  his  notes,  he 
considered  it  unfit  to  produce  certain  sounds ;  then 
he  threw  it  out  of  tune  with  impatience.  He  would 
have  done  better  to  study  it  thoroughly. 

Amiel  went  to  Germany  when  young — almost  as 
soon  as  he  left  college.  He  embraced,  with  much 
ardor,  the  intellectual  discipline  which  then  reigned. 
The  school  of  Hegel  taught  him  its  complicated 
manner  of  thinking,  and,  at  the  same  time,  ren- 
dered him  incapable  of  writing.  This  school  in- 
cited rather  to  eloquence  and  dissertation  upon  all 
sorts  of  subjects  than  to  the  continuous  composi- 
tion which  prose  demands.  Hegel  has  some  good 
points  ;  but  one  must  know  how  to  take  him.  One 
must  restrict  one's  self  to  an  infusion  ;  he  is  an  ex- 
cellent tea,  but  one  must  not  chew  the  leaves. 


ERNEST  RENAN.  269 

Amiel  did  too  much  of  this.  For  him  everything 
becomes  matter  for  system — so  completely  that,  for 
example,  on  meeting  a  very  pretty  woman  one  day 
in  the  Jura,  in  the  neighborhood  of  Soleure,  he 
passes  his  day  in  constructing  the  theory  of  co- 
quetry and  of  the  inconveniences  of  beauty.* 

If,  at  least,  this  Hegelian  education  had  but 
given  him  the  scientific  spirit  !  Nothing  of  the 
sort.  No  school  has  disseminated  in  the  world  more 
ingenious  or  profound  ideas  than  that  of  Hegel  ; 
but  in  hardly  any  direction  has  it  produced  truly 
learned  men.  There  is  in  Hegel  a  little  of  Ray- 
mond Lulle.  I  mean  of  that  false  idea  that  one 
can  substitute  lay  figures  and  general  procedure 
for  the  direct  study  of  realities.  Hence  a  sort  of 
lassitude,  which  speedily  manifested  itself  among 
the  leaders  and  disciples  of  this  school,  otherwise 
so  eminent.  There  is  no  curiosity  when  the  result 
is  foreseen  in  advance.  One  quickly  perceives  the 
end  of  that  which  one  attains  by  the  turnpike  of 
logic  ;  one  never  sees  the  end  of  reality. 

The  sort  of  lack  of  perpendicular,  which  renders 
the  layers  of  Amiel's  life  so  unstable,  has  for  cause 
this  ill-harmonized  education.  He  is  not  estab- 
lished squarely  in  his  chair  ;  he  has  not  a  suffi- 
ciently clear  idea  of  the  goal  of  the  human  mind — 
of  that  which  gives  and  furnishes  a  serious  base  to 
life  ;  he  is  neither  a  learned  man  nor  a  lettered 
man  ;  he  declares  repeatedly  that  for  him  the  su- 
preme ideal  is  the  art  of  the  man  of  letters  ;  but  he 
*  Vol.  ii,  p.  6,  and  following  pages. 


270       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

is  perfectly  conscious  that  he  lacks  this  art ;  he 
even  forms  for  himself  a  false  idea  of  it ;  he  makes 
too  much  of  a  distinction  between  the  foundation 
and  the  form  ;  he  would  gladly  believe  that  writing 
is  distinctly  separate  from  thinking.  He  is  one  of 
the  most  honest  seekers  after  truth  that  has  ever 
existed  ;  he  is  almost  a  saint,  and,  withal,  he  halts 
at  every  turn  in  the  road  to  bewail  evils  or  (what  is 
more  singular)  imaginary  sins,  and  to  note  details 
which  are  not  remarked  by  a  man  who  is  in  haste. 
He  is  never  in  haste  ;  that  constitutes  a  quality,  if 
you  choose  to  so  consider  it ;  but  it  is  the  mark  of 
a  mind  only  moderately  possessed  by  curiosity,  by 
a  craving  for  things.  He  does  not  picture  to  him- 
self the  world  as  great  or  astonishing  as  it  is  ;  he 
would  like  to  imagine — God  forgive  me  ! — that 
one  can  know  the  final  facts  about  it.  Now,  that 
is  not  possible.  Everything  remains  to  be  done, 
or  to  be  done  over  in  the  order  of  science,  of 
nature,  and  of  humanity.  When  one  is  conscious 
of  laboring  in  this  infinite  work,  one  has  no  time  to 
pause  over  petty  melancholy  points  on  the  road. 

The  most  vexatious  thing  about  it  is  that  this 
very  strained  philosophy  did  not  render  him  as 
happ'y  as  he  deserved  to  be.  At  first  glance,  one 
cannot  well  see  what  complaint  he  could  have  to 
make  against  his  destiny.  He  was  born  eminently 
well  endowed  in  intellectual  and  moral  directions  ; 
he  possessed  all  the  means  for  acquiring  high  cul- 
ture ;  he  never  had  to  struggle  with  harsh  necessi- 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  2?  I 

ties  ;  he  lived  for  sixty  years,  suffering  much,  it  is 
true,  in  his  last  years,  but  his  mind  was  always 
free.  With  all  this,  it  seems  as  though  he  should 
have  been  as  happy  as  a  king  ;  yet  his  habitual 
turn  of  thought  is  a  complaint  against  his  fate.  It 
appears  that  his  childhood  was  not  encompassed 
with  affection,  and  that  is  one  of  the  worst  things 
that  can  happen  to  a  man ;  the  joys  and  sorrows  of 
early  years  are  reflected  in  the  whole  life.  Geneva, 
on  the  other  hand,  was  one  of  the  points  in  the 
world  which  was  least  suited  to  his  nature  ;  his 
German  education  had  made  him  practically  a 
stranger  there,  and  then,  a  small  state  resembles  a 
small  town.  Perhaps  Amiel  did  not  observe  a  suf- 
ficiently complete  system  of  precautions  with  re- 
gard to  the  society  in  which  he  lived.  When  one 
is  not  like  other  men,  one  must  guard  one's  self 
against  them,  to  some  extent.  All  that  any  one  of 
us  has  the  right  to  exact  from  the  society  of  which 
he  forms  a  part  is  that  he  shall  be  tolerated.  One 
almost  always  succeeds  in  securing  this,  by  dint  of 
good  humor  and  impartiality.  One  of  Amiel'sbits 
of  simplicity  was  to  consider  himself  obliged  to 
take  part  in  the  battles  of  the  pygmies,  and  to  make 
common  cause  with  a  party  which,  had  it  been  in 
power,  would  have  understood  him  no  better  than 
the  democratic  party.  He  became  a  reactionary 
wantonly,  and  in  the  most  disinterested  fashion. 
The  man  who  has  consecrated  his  life  to  the  search 
for  the  true  and  the  pursuit  of  good  ought  not  to 


272        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

attach  himself  absolutely  to  any  of  the  revolutions 
which  follow  each  other  in  this  world.  He  should 
know  but  one  interest — that  of  the  human  soul 
and  the  human  mind. 

That  which  is  to  be  sincerely  regretted  is  that 
Amiel  did  not  come  to  Paris  in  1860,  at  the  epoch 
when  the  Germanic  Review  was  founded  ;  M. 
Scherer  invited  him.  M.  Sainte-Beuve  would  have 
exercised  a  dominating  influence  upon  him.  We 
should  have  succeeded,  I  think,  in  diminishing,  for 
his  own  good,  the  deleterious  influence  of  the  fer- 
ments of  sadness  which  nature,  as  well  as  his  first 
and  his  second  education,  had  implanted  in  him. 
Religion,  it  must  be  admitted,  had  aggravated  the 
evil.  This  is,  assuredly,  the  most  singular  side  of 
Amiel.  This  Hegelian  to  the  last  degree,  this 
Buddhist,  this  rationalist,  perfectly  convinced  of 
the  non-existence  of  the  unrevealed  supernatural, 
followed  the  established  cult.  The  traces  of  the 
sermons  of  Saint  Peter  of  Geneva  are  frequently 
encountered  in  his  thoughts.  Amiel  is  not  only  a 
Protestant,  he  is  an  orthodox  Protestant,  extremely 
opposed  to  liberal  Protestantism.  He  speaks  of 
sin,  of  salvation,  of  redemption,  of  conversion,  as 
though  they  were  realities.  Sin,  in  particular, 
engrosses  his  attention,  saddens  him — him;  the  best 
of  men,  who  less  than  anyone  else  could  know 
what  it  is.  He  reproaches  me  forcibly  for  not 
taking  it  sufficiently  into  account,  and  he  asks 
himself  two  or  three  times  :  "  What  does  M.  Renan 


ERNEST  RENAN.  273 

do  with  sin  ? "  As  I  said  the  other  day,  in  my 
native  town,  I  really  believe  that  I  suppress  it,  in 
fact.  That  is  the  great  difference  between  Catholic 
and  Protestant  education.  Those  who,  like  myself, 
have  received  a  Catholic  education,  have  preserved 
profound  vestiges  of  it.  But  these  vestiges  are 
not  dogmas  ;  they  are  dreams.  When  that  great 
curtain  of  cloth  of  gold,  striped  with  silk,  cotton, 
and  calico,  with  which  Catholicism  masks  from  us 
the  view  of  the  w%rld  ;  when  this  great  curtain,  I 
say,  has  once  been  rent,  one  beholds  the  universe 
in  its  infinite  splendor,  nature  in  its  lofty  and  com- 
plete majesty.  The  most  liberal  Protestant  often 
retains  some  sadness,  a  foundation  of  intellectual 
austerity  analogous  to  the  Slavic  pessimist.  It  is 
one  thing  to  smile  at  the  life  of  such  a  mythological 
saint ;  it  is  quite  another  thing  to  preserve  the  im- 
print of  those  terrible  mysteries  which  have  sad- 
dened so  many  souls,  and  those  of  the  best.  What 
is  odd,  in  fact,  is  that  it  is  the  souls  which  are  the 
most  foreign  to  sin  which  torment  themselves  the 
most  with  it,  search  persistently  for  it,  and,  under 
the  pretext  of  extirpating  an  evil  which  they  have 
not,  dissect  themselves,  tear  themselves  perpetually 
with  blows  of  the  scalpel. 

Moreover,  there  was  in  Amiel's  religious  attitude 
something  more  than  the  memories  of  childhood. 
He  must  have  learned  those  fine  feats  of  strength 
which  permit  one  to  deny  everything  speculatively, 
only  to  affirm  everything  practically,  at  Berlin,  from 


274       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

old  Marheineke,  or  from  some  one  of  his  pupils. 
Afterward  it  only  grew  and  added  embellishments. 
The  strangest  intellectual  paradox  with  which 
philosophical  Germany  has  astonished  us  is  the 
eccentric  pretension  of  a  certain  school  to  found 
religion  upon  the  postulate  of  pessimism.  Have 
we  not  lately  seen  M.  Hartmann,  the  same  M. 
Hartmann  who  declares  explicitly  that  creation  is 
an  error,  and  that  the  hypothesis  of  nothingness 
would  have  been  better  than  «he  hypothesis  of 
being,  find  at  the  same  time  that  religion  is  neces- 
sary, and  that  it  has  for  its  base  the  evil  inherent 
in  human  nature  ? 

"Religion,"  writes  M.  Hartmann,  "has  its  source 
in  the  fact  that  the  human  mind  comes  into  col- 
lision with  evil,  with  sin,  and  because,  in  conse- 
quence, it  aspires  to  explain  them,  and,  as  much  as 
possible,  to  conquer  them.  The  man  who  asks 
himself,  'How  shall  I  manage  to  endure  evil? 
How  shall  I  succeed  in  reconciling  my  tortured 
conscience  with  it  ? ' — that  man  is  on  the  road  to 
religion.  Whether  one  places  the  accent  upon  evil 
or  upon  sin,  it  is  always  discontent  with  the  world 
which  leads  to  religion.  If  t«he  painful  impressions 
caused  by  evil  and  sin  do  not  weigh  sufficiently 
heavy  in  the  scale  of  the  balance  to  surmount,  in 
a  durable  manner,  the  agreeable  impressions  of 
worldly  life,  the  religious  impulses  of  the  mind  will 

be  only  passing   caprices It  is   only  when 

bitter  doubt  in  relation  to  evil  and  the  agony  of 


ERNEST  RE  MAX.  27$ 

moral  culpability  have  dominated  worldly  satisfac- 
tions and  formed  the  general  current  of  existence  ; 
it  is  only  when  the  pessimistic  sentiment  has  gained 
the  upper  hand  that  religion  can  establish  itself  in 
the  soul  in  a  durable  manner.  Where  this  pes- 
simistic direction  of  the  mind  is  not  found  religion 
cannot  grow,  at  least  spontaneously." 

Here,  indeed,  is  the  antipodes  of  our  ideas.  We 
think,  the  best  of  us,  that  one  is  religious  when  one 
is  content  with  the  good  God  and  with  one's  self; 
and  now  it  appears  that  one  is  religious  when  one 
is  in  a  bad  humor,  and  when  one  has  committed 
sins  !  ....  I  no  longer  understand  it  in  the  least. 
Day  by  day  I  grow  more  disgusted  with  tran- 
scendentalism, and  I  am  coming  to  believe  that  the 
French  solution,  which  is  contained  in  liberty,  and 
which  is  destined  to  end,  gradually,  in  the  separa- 
tion of  religions  and  the  state,  is,  in  the  present 
condition  of  the  human  mind,  the  only  rational 
solution.  Liberalism  terminates  nothing,  no  doubt ; 
but  it  is  precisely  on  this  point  that  it  is  right,  or, 
at  least,  it  is  on  this  point  that  it  is  the  sole  prac- 
tical expedient  in  the  presence  of  that  individual- 
ism in  belief  which  has  become  the  law  of  our  times. 

Superior  minds  frequently  have  to  guard  them- 
selves against  these  reactionary  tendencies,  masked 
beneath  appearances  of  profound  philosophy.  As 
they  soar  very  high  in  the  region  of  the  atmos- 
phere where  ideas  unfold,  and  where  are  formed 
the  great  currents  of  air  which  waft  them,  they 


276       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

imagine  that  they  can  couple  the  clouds  at  their 
will,  and,  like  ^Eolus,  force  the  wind  to  blow  where 
they  please.  These  fine  aerial  strategies  have 
something  touching  about  them,  but  also  something 
pretentious.  A  man  desires  to  be  the  lancet  which 
strikes  and  which  cures  ;  after  having  cleverly  cut 
the  root  of  moral  and  religious  beliefs,  he  wishes 
to  figure  as  the  restorer  of  them  ;  after  the  reader 
has  passed  through  the  alarms  of  skepticism,  he 
finds  that,  thank  God,  all  is  safe  and  sound.  And 
in  connection  with  this  subject,  I  cannot  help 
thinking  of  our  eminent  thinker  M.  Lachelier,  the 
inventor  of  the  most  surprising  circular  philo- 
sophical movement  of  modern  times  after  Kant. 
After  having  applied  to  all  the  operations  of  the 
mind  a  criticism  so  corrosive  that  it  leaves  almost 
nothing  behind  it,  on  arriving  at  the  final  bounds 
of  nihilism  he  turns  completely  round.  One  sad 
thought  suffices  to  make  him  discover  that  he  is  a 
perfect  Christian.  This  reconstruction  of  Chris- 
tianity on  the  basis  of  pessimism  is  one  of  the  most 
striking  intellectual  symptoms  of  our  day.  It  is  so 
difficult  to  deprive  one's  self  of  the  support  of  an 
established  religion  that,  after  having  destroyed 
the  churches  of  granite,  people  build  churches  of 
old  plaster.  This  reminds  me  of  the  church  of 
Ferney,  which  now  serves  as  a  hay  barn,  with  the 
inscription  :  Deo  erexit  Voltaire — Voltaire  erected 
this  to  God. 

What  is  very  remarkable  is  that  the  elements  of 


ERNEST  RENAN.     .  277 

this  pessimistic  Christianity,  by  which  people  imag- 
ine that  they  can  make  religion  flourish  once  more 
in  the  world,  are  drawn  solely  from  Saint  Paul. 
Jesus  and  the  preaching  of  the  Gallilean  are  for- 
gotten ;  one  no  longer  knows  what  the  sun  of  the 
kingdom  of  God  is.  I  confess  that  the  dogma  of 
original  sin  is  the  one  for  which  I  have  the  least 
taste.  There  is  not  another  dogma  which  is  built, 
like  that  one,  on  the  point  of  a  needle.  The  tale 
of  Adam's  sin  is  found  in  only  one  of  the  editions 
whose  alternate  pages  compose  the  tissues  of  Gen- 
esis. If  the  Elohist  edition  alone  had  come  down 
to  us,  there  would  have  been  no  original  sin.  The 
Jehovist  narrative  of  the  first  fault,  a  very  beautiful 
narrative,  by  the  way,  and,  relatively,  very  ancient, 
was  never  noticed  by  the  ancient  people  of  Israel. 
Saint  Paul  was  the  first  to  draw  from  it  the  fright- 
ful dogma  which,  for  centuries,  has  filled  humanity 
with  sadness  and  terror.  It  is  quite  true  that  this 
may  have  been  powerful  in  its  day,  that  Protestant- 
ism in  particular,  in  order  that  it  might  have  the 
right  to  suppress  much  more  gross  and  abusive  dross, 
may  have  been  right  in  laying  emphasis  on  those 
austere  beliefs,  which,  by  placing  men  in  absolute 
dependence  upon  God  and  Jesus  Christ  removed 
him  from  the  priest  and  the  official  Church  ;  but 
why  should  rational  minds,  like  ourselves,  retain 
such  fictions  ?  If  we  admit  the  part  of  the  super- 
natural contained  in  original  sin  and  in  the  redemp- 
tion, I  do  not  see  why  we  halt  there.  The  ques- 


2?S       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

tion  is  to  find  out  whether  the  supernatural  exists. 
When  one  has  recognized  its  existence,  there  is  no 
reason  for  bargaining  about  quantity. 

Has  this  dogma  of  sin,  at  least  the  advantage  of 
accounting,  in  a  more  or  less  symbolical  manner, 
for  the  great  facts  of  the  history  of  human  society  ? 
No,  certainly  not.  Do  we  desire  to  say  that  phys- 
ical and  moral  evil  are  superabundant,  that  man 
does  not  attain  his  goal,  which  is  the  realization  of 
a  society  in  some  small  degree  just,  only  by  dint  of 
continual  efforts  ?  Oh  !  that  is  true,  no  doubt. 
But  that  is  giving  to  the  expression  of  an  evident 
fact  a  mythological  and  inexact  turn.  The  world 
reveals  to  us,  with  a  complete  absence  of  a  well- 
digested  plan,  a  spontaneous  effort,  like  that  of  the 
embryo,  toward  life  and  consciousness.  The  world, 
or,  to  speak  in  a  more  limited  manner,  the  planet 
which  we  inhabit,  draws  or  will  draw  from  the 
capital  which  has  been  allotted  to  it,  the  sutiinnim 
of  what  can  be  extracted  from  it.  To  demand  of 
the  universe  and  of  each  one  of  its  bodies  that  they 
shall  realize,  on  the  first  start,  absolute  perfection, 
is  to  demand  of  it  a  flagrant  contradiction.  Good 
is  ob.tained  by  the  obscure  consciousness  of  the 
universe  only  in  consideration  of  a  certain  quantity 
of  evil.  To  be  or  not  to  be,  the  choice  is  open. 
But  from  the  moment  that  the  universe  has  decided 
— and  I  think  that  it  has  done  very  well — in  favor  of 
being  and  for  conscience,  the  compensating  dose 
of  evil  is  absolutely  inevitable, 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  279 

The  metamorphosis  of  animals  is  a  fit  of  pain. 
Pain  is  the  perpetual  warning  of  life,  the  incitement 
to  all  progress.  Why  does  the  insect  aspire  to  dis- 
embarrass himself  of  an  organ  which  would  burden 
him  in  his  new  life  ?  Because  he  suffers.  Why 
does  the  being  engendered  desire  to  separate 
itself  from  the  generating  being  ?  Because  it 
suffers.  Pain  creates  effort  ;  it  is  salutary.  Man 
is,  evidently,  the  special  being,  which  is  the  most 
elevated  that  we  can  know.  His  astonishing  pre- 
rogatives are  purchased  by  harsh  conditions.  The 
development  of  an  organ  so  complicated  as  the 
human  body  presupposes  a  considerable  sum  of 
suffering.  It  is  impossible  that  the  child  should 
not  suffer,  that  the  mother  should  not  suffer,  that 
the  old  man  should  not  suffer,  and,  as  for  death,  it 
is  the  absolutely  necessary  consequence  of  the  self- 
evident  law  that  every  organism  which  has  a  begin- 
ning must  have  an  end. 

"  Thou  shalt  bring  forth  children  in  pain,"  is 
presented  by  .theologians  as  a  condemnation  in 
consequence  of  a  crime,  but,  to  be  more  exact,  it 
would  be  necessary  that  the  actual  period  should 
have  been  preceded  by  another  period  in  which 
the  woman  brought  forth  without  pain,  which  has 
never  existed,  unless  on  the  lowest  rungs  of  human- 
ity. The  man  of  fine  race  is  a  determinate  thing, 
a  maximum  obtained  only  by  skirting  precipices  ; 
a  thousand  causes  of  ruin  level  their  aim  at  him, 
besiege  him.  The  exquisite  is  a  wager  against  the 


280        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

possible.  Nature,  aiming  'at  obtaining  the  most 
elevated  type  of  animal,  could  not  do  otherwise  than 
make  the  birth  of  such  a  being  a  crisis  for  the 
mother.  Supposing  that  man  had  a  head  as  large 
again  as  that  which  he  has  in  the  good  races,  he 
would  kill  his  mother  at  his  birth,  and  he  would  be 
subject  to  perpetual  congestions.  Everything  in 
nature  is  the  result  of  a  balance  struck  between 
the  opposing  advantages  and  inconveniences.  The 
lever  of  the  arm  is  very  disadvantageous  for  mus- 
cular effort  ;  a  better  lever  would  have  given  us 
an  arm  like  the  wing  of  a  pelican.  Our  heart,  our 
spinal  cord,  our  brain,  are  very  fragile  things  ;  were 
they  more  solid  they  would  be  unsuited  to  the  del- 
icate uses  to  which  we  put  them.  Nature  never 
enters  upon  a  blind  alley  without  exit  ;  in  order  to 
obtain  the  result  which  she  seeks,  always  a  good 
one,  she  goes  to  the  point  where  the  compensating 
inconvenience  is  mortal  ;  she  behaves  like  a  gen- 
eral who  weighs  in  the  balance  the  object  and  the 
losses  necessary  to  attain  it.  She  wishes  the  high- 
est sum  of  life  with  the  least  possible  suffering. 

She  wishes — I  say  it  badly,  no  doubt  ;  but  things 
happen  as  though  it  were  so.  The  definitive  re- 
sult of  the  obscure  battle  which  is  being  inces- 
santly waged  for  life  is  in  favor  of  good.  The  too 
deficient  being  disappears  or  does  not  arrive  at 
existence,  the  imperfect  being  reforms  itself  and 
aspires  to  a  type  possible  in  normal  life.  This  is  so 
true  that  nature  troubles  herself  not  at  all  about 


EKATEST  REN  AN.  281 

small  inconveniences.  As  in  a  state  it  is  easier  to 
correct  great  evils,  ulcers  which  constitute  a  danger 
of  death,  than  to  extirpate  the  petty  abuses  which 
do  not  menace  the  existence  of  the  social  body  ;  so 
nature  has  not  corrected  in  the  human  body  those 
defects  which  shock  us,  but  which  were  not  of  a 
sort  to  condemn  the  species  to  the  impossibility  of 
existing. 

II. 

Amiel's  religion  was  in  constant  process  of  puri- 
fication, but  it  always  remained  a  sad  religion,  more 
analogous,  on  the  whole,  to  Buddhism  than  to 
Christianity.  Although  he  deprecates  the  excesses 
of  what  he  terms  German  Sivaism,  in  Bahnsen,  for 
example,  he  strongly  recalls,  in  reality,  the  last 
formulas  of  Hartmann.  Sin  and  deliverance,  that 
is  the  sum  of  the  theology  of  the  modern  disciples 
of  Cakya-Mouni. 

Nothing,  in  my  opinion,  could  be  more  contrary 
to  the  ideas  which  are  bound  to  prevail  in  the 
future.  The  sum  of  human  happiness  must  be  aug- 
mented. It  is  not  of  sin,  of  expiation,  of  redemp- 
tion that  men  must  be  told  in  the  future  ;  it  is  of 
goodness,  cheerfulness,  indulgence,  good  humor, 
resignation.  In  proportion  as  the  hopes  of  the 
next  world  vanish,  these  transitory  beings  must 
become  habituated  to  regard  life  as  supportable  ; 
otherwise  they  will  revolt.  Man  can  no  longer  be 
kept  in  repose,  except  by  happiness.  Now,  in  a  so- 


282        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

ciety  which  is  not  too  badly  constituted,  very  few 
people  have  reason  to  complain  that  they  have  been 
brought  into  the  world.  The  cause  of  pessimism 
and  nihilism  lies  in  the  tedium  of  a  life  which,  in 
consequence  of  a  defective  social  organization,  is 
not  worth  the  trouble  of  living.  Life  is  of  value 
only  in  proportion  to  its  fruits  ;  if  we  wish  that  men 
should  cling  to  it,  it  must  be  rendered  savory  and 
delectable  to  lead. 

Amiel  asks  himself  uneasily  :  "  What  is  it  that 
saves  ?  "  Eh!  good  Heavens  !  'tis  that  which  gives 
to  each  person  his  motive  for  living.  The  means 
of  salvation  are  not  the  same  for  all.  For  one  it  is 
virtue,  for  another  it  is  ardor  for  the  truth,  for  an- 
other the  love  of  art,  for  others  still  curiosity,  am- 
bition, travel,  luxury,  women,  wealth  ;  in  the  lowest 
degree,  morphine  and  alcohol.  Virtuous  men  find 
their  recompense  in  virtue  itself  ;  those  who  are 
not  virtuous  have  pleasure,  instead. 

All  have  the  imagination,  that  is  to  say,  supreme 
joy,  enchantments  which  never  grow  old  ;  with  the 
exception  of  a  few  cases  of  moral  pathology  there 
is  no  life  so  gloomy  that  some  ray  of  sunshine  does 
not  penetrate  it. 

The  most  dangerous  error,  in  the  matter  of  social 
morality,  is  the  systematic  suppression  of  pleasure. 
Rigorously  correct  virtue  is  an  aristocracy  ;  every- 
body is  not  equally  bound  thereto.  He  who  has 
received  the  privilege  of  intellectual  and  moral 
nobility  is  obliged  to  belong  to  it  ;  but  the  good 


ERNEST  RENAN.  283 

old  Gallic  morality  did  not  impose  the  same  bur- 
dens  on  all ;  kindness,  courage,  gayety,  confidence 
in  the  God  of  good  men,  suffice  for  salvation.  It 
is  necessary  that  the  masses  should  amuse  them- 
selves. For  my  own  part  I  feel  no  need  of  exter- 
nal amusement  ;  but  I  do  need  to  feel  that  people 
are  amusing  themselves  around  me  ;  I  enjoy  the 
gayety  of  others.  Temperance  societies  are  founded 
upon  excellent  intentions,  but  upon  a  misunder- 
standing as  well.  I  know  but  one  argument  in  their 
favor.  Madame  T.  said  to  me  one  day,  that  the 
husbands  in  certain  countries  beat  their  wives,  when 
they  are  not  temperance  men.  That  is  horrible,  as- 
suredly ;  we  must  try  to  correct  that.  But  instead 
of  suppressing  drunkenness  for  those  who  require 
it,  would  it  not  be  better  to  try  to  render  it  gentle, 
amiable,  accompanied  by  moral  sentiments  ?  There 
are  so  many  men  with  whom  the  hour  after  intoxi- 
cation is,  next  to  the  hour  after  love,  the  moment 
when  they  are  at  their  best. 

Inequality  and  variety  are  the  fundamental  laws 
of  the  human  species.  Nothing  must  be  suppressed 
in  the  conflicting  manifestations  of  this  eccentric 
collective  being.  It  has  been  said  that  it  is  neither 
angel  nor  beast ;  I  would  say  rather,  that  it  is  both 
angel  and  beast.  A  being  organized  eternal  and 
perfect  is  a  contradiction.  Must  we  for  this  reason 
reject  the  pencil  of  light  which  nature  deals  out  to 
us  in  our  turn  ?  It  is  as  though  one  were  to  refuse 
a  cup  of  exquisite  wine  because  it  will  soon  be  ex- 


284       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

hausted,  or  a  pleasure  because  it  does  not  last 
long.  There  is  great  inequality,  no  doubt  ;  but 
nearly  everyone  has  something,  and  the  progress 
of  human  societies  will,  constantly  reduce  more 
and  more  the  number  of  the  disinherited.  There 
remains  pain,  which  is,  assuredly,  an  odious,  hu- 
miliating thing,  injurious  to  the  noble  functions 
of  life.  Man  can  combat  it,  almost  suppress  it, 
always  escape  it.  The  cases  in  which  man  is  fet- 
tered to  life  are  very  rare.  The  only  destiny  to  be 
absolutely  condemned  is  that  of  the  enslaved  ani- 
mal; of  the  horse,  for  example,  who  cannot  commit 
suicide,  or  of  those  persons  condemned  to  death, 
who  are  kept  in  sight,  or  of  the  demented  ;  but 
these  are  very  exceptional  situations.  The  im- 
mense majority  of  individuals  have  not  to  complain 
of  their  passage  through  being,  since  the  balance 
of  life  is  settled  in  joy,  and  since  death  may  some 
day  be  rendered  painless. 

Hence  the  problem  of  the  origin  of  evil,  so  pain- 
fully agitated  by  ancient  philosophy,  is  not  a 
problem.  The  Manichaean  theory  of  the  good 
God  and  the  evil  God  is  irrefutable  in  the  theistic 
conception  of  the  reckoning  and  omnipotent  God. 
It  has  no  longer  any  sense  in  the  conception 
of  a  universe  which  draws  from  its  own  bosom 
all  that  it  can.  Evil  is  the  absolute  condition  of 
conscious  existence.  The  world  succeeds  in  pro- 
curing a  little  of  good  justice,  and  the  ideal,  with 
myriads  of  egotisms.  When  one  thinks  of  the  road 


ERNEST  KENAN".  285 

that  it  has  been  necessary  to  traverse  in  order  that, 
from  the  system  of  reciprocal  extermination,  which 
was  the  law  of  the  primitive  world,  Kant's  notion 
of  the  categorical  imperative  should  emerge,  one  is 
really  surprised  at  the  wise  ways  which  nature's 
policy  has  pursued.  The  order  of  things  in  which 
evil  is  of  the  most  consequence,  and  in  which  our 
supreme  duty  is  to  combat  it,  is  the  human  reign  ; 
therein  an  infinite  amount  remains  to  be  done,  un- 
deniably ;  but  much  has  also  been  done  already. 
The  human  world  is  much  less  wicked  nowadays, 
and  much  less  unjust,  than  it  was  three  or  four 
thousand  years  ago.  The  general  intention  of  the 
universe  is  benevolent.  The  evil  which  it  still  re- 
tains is  the  necessary  imperfection  which  sponta- 
neity cannot  eliminate  and  which  science  must 
combat.  The  problem  is  to  learn  whether  the 
hypothesis  of  the  existence  of  the  world  was  worse, 
as  M.  Hartmann  maintains,  than  the  hypothesis  of 
non-existence.  For  my  own  part,  I  think  that  the 
hypothesis  of  being  is  of  more  value,  from  the 
simple  fact  that  it  has  been  realized.  The  world, 
in  M.  Hartmann's  opinion,  is  an  effect  without 
a  cause.  Being,  or  consciousness,  at  least,  began 
and  continues  in  the  world  only  because  there  is 
in  being  an  increased  value  of  good  for  the  sum 
total  of  conscious  individuals. 

A  world  in  which  the  evil  should  surpass  the  good 
would  be  a  world  which  would  not  exist  or  which 
would  disappear.  There  are  very  few  beings,  in  fact. 


286       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

who,  when  placed  in  the  presence  of  destruction, 
have  not  a  horror  of  it.  They  prefer  existence 
with  its  miseries,  to  nothingness.  Suicide  is  an  ex- 
tremely rare  event.  Even  the  animal  which  is,  in 
appearance,  the  most  odiously-  exploited  by  an- 
other, has  its  compensations.  The  oyster  gives 
pleasure  to  the  man  who  swallows  it  under  condi- 
tions in  which  its  pain  must  be  almost  nothing  ;  and 
before  that,  for  months,  the  man  has  guarded  it  in 
an  oyster  bed  where  he  has  protected  it  against  all 
hostile  beasts,  and  where  it  has  enjoyed  a  longer 
and  happier  existence  than  it  would  have  had  in  a 
state  of  nature.  There  are,  we  admit,  some  human 
creatures  for  whom,  in  consequence  of  fatal  coin- 
cidences, it  would  have  been  better  had  they  not 
existed.  Let  us  hope  .that  the  cases  of  this  sort 
will  become  more  and  more  rare,  and  that  they  will 
even  disappear  altogether. 

Nothing,  then,  is  less  well  grounded  than  the  re- 
proaches which  pessimists  indulge  in  toward  the 
spirit  of  benevolence  which,  in  our  opinion,  rules 
this  universe.  These  objections  land  full  in  the 
breast  of  those  pure  theists,  who  consider  the  divine 
consciousness  to  be  a  reflective  consciousness 
which  combines  things  scientifically.  They  are 
unsolvable  for  those  who  cling  to  the  ideas  of  the 
ancient  theology  as  to  the  divine  omnipotence. 
But  such  objections  have  no  value  as  opposed  to 
those  who  believe  that  the  world  is  abandoned  to 
the  spontaneous  play  of  its  own  forces.  Nature  is 


ERNEST  KENAN:  287 

like  a  boiler  at  high  pressure  ;  it  gives  off  every- 
thing which  is  not  retained  by  the  wall  of  the 
impossible.  In  reality,  what  the  pessimists  de- 
mand, what  they  conceive  as  the  ideal  of  a  per- 
fect world,  is  a  world  of  miracles,  a  world  where 
the  deus  ex  machina  should  intervene  incessantly, 
to  correct,  in  detail,  the  defects  which  he  has  not 
been  able  to  foresee  in  the  lump.  That  which 
possesses  them  all  is  the  anthropocentric  error, 
the  artless  fatuity  of  man  judging  the  world 
from  the  point  of  view  of  his  comfort,  as  though 
the  ant  should  set  up  its  theory  of  the  universe, 
taking  into  account  only  the  needs  of  its  little 
circle. 

Amiel  has  too  just  a  sense  to  allow  himself 
to  indulge  in  the  exaggerations  of  the  school, 
void  of  tact,  which  has  sprung  from  the  clever 
Schopenhauer.  Amiel  is  a  poet,  and  he  has 
a  lively  love  for  nature.  He  understands  half  of 
Goethe  ;  then  the  fundamental  contradiction  of 
his  being  gets  the  upper  hand. 

"  Goethe  ignores  sanctity,  and  would  never  re- 
flect upon  the  terrible  problem  of  evil He 

never  reached  the  sentiment  of  obligation  and  of 
sin."  The  idealistic  Manichaeism  is  all  the  more 
singular  in  Amiel  since  he  fully  admits  the  rights 
of  aestheticism.  Now,  the  singular  fact  of  admit- 
ting in  nature  a  sort  of  coquetry  is  full  of  conse- 
quences. If  Nature  were  wicked  she  would  be 


288       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

ugly.  Beauty  is  the  adornment  which  both 
flower  and  animal  assume  with  a -view  to  love. 
In  this  adornment  of  the  plant  and  the  animal 
there  is  never  a  fault  in  the  design,  there  is 
never  a  crude  or  badly  assorted  color.  Nature 
has  taste  ;  only  she  does  not  go  as  far  as  morals  ; 
she  does  not  go  beyond  love. 

That  is  why,  in  the  eyes  of  reason,  she  is 
so  often  unjust  and  immoral.  We  feel  an  irre- 
sistible need  for  assuming  in  the  government 
of  the  world  the  justice  of  which  we  find  the 
dictates  in  our  hearts  ;  and,  as  it  has  been  plainly 
proved  that  this  justice  does  not  exist  in  the 
reality  of  the  universe,  we  come  to  exact  ab- 
solutely, as  a  condition  of  morality,  the  sur- 
vival of  each  human  consciousness  beyond  the 
tomb.  Here  shines  forth  the  supreme  contra- 
diction between  nature  and  reason.  Such  a 
postulate  is,  in  fact,  the  most  necessary  thing 
a  priori  and  the  most  impossible  a  posteriori. 
The  thesis  of  the  "  Phaedo "  is  only  a  subtlety. 
I  much  prefer  the  Juclseo-Christian  system  of 
the  resurrection.  The  resurrection  would  be  a 
miracle  and  cannot  be  conceived  in  the  present 
state  of  the  world,  where  we  perceive  above  material 
facts  only  this  poor  humanity,  still  so  weak,  and  a 
general,  obscure  conscience  which  is  utterly  heed- 
less of  individuals.  Reason  is  not  all-powerful 
now;  it  endures  flagrant  injustices  which  it  cannot 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  289 

prevent.  But  if  we  could  suppose  that  it  were  all- 
powerful,  nothing  would  then  hinder  its  being  just, 
and  just  retrospectively  for  the  ages  when  justice 
has  not  been  possible.  In  a  word,  God  is  already 
good ;  but  he  is  not  omnipotent ;  he  will  be  so 
some  day,  no  doubt.  God  already  does  what  he 
can  for  justice  ;  one  of  these  days,  when  he  shall 
have  at  his  disposal  the  capital  of  the  entire  uni- 
verse, he  will  be  able  to  do  all  things.  In  that 
way,  one  might  imagine  a  grand  reparation,  and, 
as  a  slumber  of  a  million  centuries  is  not  longer 
than  the  slumber  of  an  hour,  the  reign  of  justice 
which  we  have  loved  will  appear  to  us  the  immedi- 
ate continuation  of  the  hour  of  death. 

The  resurrection  would  thus  be  the  final  act  of 
the  world,  the  act  of  an  omnipotent  and  omniscient 
God,  capable  of  being  just  and  wishing  to  be  so. 
Immortality  would  not  be  as  Plato  would  have  it ; 
that  is  a  gift  inherent  in  man,  a  consequence  of  his 
nature  ;  it  would  be  a  gift  reserved  by  the  Being, 
become  absolute,  perfect,  all-powerful,  for  those 
who  should  have  contributed  to  its  development. 
It  would  be  an  exception,  a  divine  selection,  a  rec- 
ompense accorded  by  the  triumphant  good  and 
true,  to  the  only  consciousness  of  the  past  in  which 
the  love  of  the  good  and  the  true  should  have 
reigned.  It  would  be,  in  short,  a  miracle  ;  that  is 
to  say,  a  well-meditated,  divine  act  ;  such  acts,  of 
which  we  do  not,  at  present,  know  a  single  example, 
would  become  the  law  of.  the  universe  on  the  day 


290       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

when  the  being  should  arrive  at  perfect  conscious- 
ness. 

I  sometimes  try  to  imagine  for  myself  a  sermon 
suitable  for  All  Saints'  Day — the  most  eternal  of 
religious  anniversaries — delivered  a  thousand  years 
hence,  when  man  will,  perchance,  have  already 
caught  a  glimpse  of  the  secret  of  immortality.  Is 
it  not  remarkable  that  the  festival  of  All  Saints, 
inseparable  from  the  festival  of  the  dead,  should 
be  the  only  anniversary  which  the  populace  have 
retained  ?  In  the  melancholy  with  which  we  think 
of  the  elect  of  the  less  favored  ages,  there  lies 
hidden  a  sort  of  pious  effort  to  restore  them  to 
life.  We  are  obliged  to  think  that  everything 
which  has  existed  still  exists  somewhere  in  an 
image  which  can  be  revivified.  The  negatives  of 
all  things  are  preserved.  The  stars.at  the  extreme 
ends  of  the  universe  are  receiving,  at  the  present 
moment,  the  image  of  deeds  which  took  place 
centuries  ago.  The  imprints  of  everything  which 
has  existed  live,  arranged  in  degrees,  in  the 
diverse  zones  of  infinite  space.  It  remains  for  the 
supreme  photographer  to  strike  off  fresh  copies 
from  them.  Surely  he  will  resuscitate  only  that 
which  has  served  the  ends  of  the  good,  and,  con- 
sequently, of  the  true.  That  will  be  our  recom- 
pense. Inferior  souls  will  have  had  theirs  in  the 
low  enjoyments  which  they  have  sought. 

These  are  the  questions  which  1  should  have  so 
much  liked  to  discuss  with  poor  Amiel,  if  I  had 
had  the  pleasure  of  knowing  him.  On  page  123  of 


ERNEST  RE  NAN.  291 

Volume  II,  I  think  that  he  is  rather  unjust  to  me. 
He  is  indignant  that,  when  I  treat  of  such  topics, 
I  sometimes  allow  of  smiles  and  irony.  Well,  in 
that  point  I  think  that  I  am  tolerably  philosophical. 
Complete  obscurity,  which  is,  perhaps,  providential, 
conceals  from  us  the  moral  objects  of  the  universe. 
On  this  matter  one  makes  bets  ;  one  draws  lots ; 
in  reality,  one  knows  nothing.  Our  wager,  our 
real  acierto  in  the  Spanish  fashion,  the  inward  in- 
spiration which  makes  us  affirm  duty,  is  a  sort  of 
oracle,  an  infallible  voice,-  coming  from  without, 
and  corresponding  to  an  objective  reality.  We 
stake  our  nobility  on  this  obstinate  affirmation  ;  we 
do  well :  we  must  cling  to  it,  even  in  the  face  cf 
evidence.  But  there  are  almost  as  many  chances 
that  the  exact  contrary  may  prove  true.  It  is 
possible  that  these  inward  voices  proceed  from 
honest  illusions  upheld  by  habit,  and  that  the 
world  is  merely  an  amusing  fairy  spectacle,  which 
is  not  in  charge  of  any  god  at  all.  Hence,  we 
must  so  arrange  matters  for  ourselves  that,  in 
either  hypothesis,  we  may  not  be  wholly  in  the 
wrong.  We  must  listen  to  the  higher  voices,  but 
in  such  a  manner  that,  in  case  the  second  hypothesis 
prove  the  true  one,  we  may  not  be  too  thoroughly 
duped.  If,  in  fact,  the  world  is  not  a  serious 
thing,  it  is  the  dogmatic  people  who  will  turn  out 
to  have  been  frivolous,  and  the  worldly  people, 
those  whom  the  theologians  treat  as  giddypates, 
who  will  have  been  the  genuinely  wise. 

What  seems  advisable,  under  the  circumstances, 


292        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

is  a  double-edged  wisdom,  equally  ready  for  the 
two  eventualities  of  the  dilemma,  a  middle  course 
in  which,  in  one  fashion  or  another,  we  shall  not  be 
obliged  to  say:  Ergo  erravimus — Therefore  we  have 
gone  astray.  It  is,  above  all,  for  the  sake  of  others 
that  we  must  be  scrupulous  in  this  matter.  A  man 
may  run  great  risks  on  his  own  account ;  but  he 
has  not  the  right  to  gamble  for  others.  When  a 
man  has  souls  in  his  charge,  he  must  express  himself 
with  a  good  deal  of  reserve  so  that,  in  the  hypothe- 
sis of  a  grand  bankruptcy,  those  whom  he  has  com- 
promised may  find  that  they  have  not  been  too 
much  victimized. 

In  iiti-umque  paratus ! — To  be  ready  for  every- 
thing— therein,  perhaps,  lies  wisdom.  The  way  to 
be  sure  that  one  has  been  in  the  right,  for  a  few 
moments  at  least,  is  to  abandan  one's  self,  by  turns, 
to  confidence,  to  skepticism,  to  optimism,  to  irony. 
You  will  say  to  me  that  by  this  means  one  will  not 
turn  out  to  have  been  completely  in  the  right.  No 
doubt ;  but  as  there  is  not  the  slightest  chance 
,that  the  grand  prize  in  this  lottery  is  reserved  for 
anyone,  it  is  prudent  to  confine  one's  self  to  more 
modest  pretensions.  Well  !  that  state  of  soul  which 
M.  Amiel  disdainfully  designates  as  "  the  epicurism 
of  the  imagination  "  is,  perhaps  for  that  very  reason, 
not  so  bad  a  course.  Gayety  has  this  one  very 
philosophical  thing  about  it,  that  it  seems  to  say  to 
nature  that  we  do  not  take  her  any  more  seriously 
than  she  takes  us  ;  if  the  world  is  a  bad  farce,  we 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  293 

shall  turn  it  into  a  good  farce  by  dint  of  gayety. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  an  indulgent  and  benevolent 
thought  does  preside  over  the  universe,  we  enter 
into  the  intentions  of  this  supreme  thought  far 
better  by  joyous  resignation  than  by  the  sullen 
rigidity  of  the  sectary  and  the  eternal  lament  of  the 
believer. 

"  Banter  hypocrisies  ;  but  speak  in  a  straightfor- 
ward way  to  honest  men,"  Amiel  says  to  me  with  a 
certain  acerbity.  Good  Heavens  !  honest  men  are 
often  exposed  to  the  danger  of  being  hypocrites 
without  knowing  it !  It  is  said  that  Socrates  in- 
vented irony.  If  this  be  true,  it  must  be  confessed 
that  the  sage  of  Athens  has  uttered  the  final  word 
of  philosophy.  We  no  longer  admit,  in  truth,  of 
philosophy  being  spoken  of  otherwise  than  with  a 
smile.  We  owe  virtue  to  the  Eternal ;  but  we 
have  the  right  to  couple  irony  with  it,  by  way  of 
personal  reprisals.  By  this  method  we  return 
pleasantry  for  pleasantry  to  the  .person  to  whom  it  is 
due  ;  we  play  the  trick  which  has  been  played  on  us. 
Saint  Augustine's  remark  :Domine,  si  error  est,  a  te 
decepti  sunnis — Lord,  if  there  be  an  error,  we  have 
been  deceived  by  Thee — still  remains  very  beauti- 
ful, very  much  in  conformity  with  modern  senti- 
ments. Only,  we  desire  the  Eternal  to  feel  that, 
if  we  accept  the  cheat,  we  accept  it  with  full  knowl- 
edge and  voluntarily.  We  are  resigned  beforehand 
to  lose  the  interests  of  our  virtuous  investments  ; 
but  we  should  not  like  to  be  exposed  to  the  ridicule 


294       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

of  seeming  to  have  reckoned  much  upon  them.  By 
speaking  of  all  this  in  a  positive  manner,  we  fear 
to  appear  to  have  fallen  too  readily  into  the  trap 
set  for  our  simplicity. 

Such  was,  moreover,  Amiel's  final  conclusion. 
A  few  weeks  before  his  death  he  perceived  wisdom. 
On  the  last  leaves  of  his  journal  we  find  the  fol- 
lowing beautiful  page  : 

"  For  many  years,  the  immanent  God  has  been 
more  actual  to  me  than  the  transcendent  God  ;  the 
religion  of  Jacob  has  been  stranger  to  me  than  that 
of  Kant  or  even  of  Spinoza.  The  entire  Semitic 
dramaturgy  has  appeared  to  me  a  work  of  the  im- 
agination. The  apostolic  documents  have  changed 
their  value  and  their  sense  in  my  eyes.  Belief  and 
truth  have  differentiated  themselves  with  ever- 
increasing  clearness.  Religious  psychology  has 
become  a  simple  phenomenon,  and  has  lost  its 
fixed  and  nominal  value.  The  apologetics  of 
Pascal,  of  Leibnitz,  of  Secretan,  seem  to  me  no 
more  proof  positive  than  those  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
for  they  assume  that  which  is  in  question,  a  re- 
vealed doctrine,  a  definite  and  immutable  Christi- 
anity. It  seems  to  me  that  that  which  remains  to 
me,  from  all  my  studies,  is  a  new  phenomenology 
of  the  mind,  the  intuition  of  the  universal  meta- 
morphosis ;  all  private  convictions,  all  principles 
concerning  it,  all  acknowledged  formulas,  all  non- 
fusible  ideas  are  only  prejudices  useful  to  practice, 
but  proofs  of  narrowness  of  mind.  The  absolute 
of  detail  is  absurd  and  contradictory.  Political, 
religious,  aesthetic,  literary,  parties  are  ankylosis  of 
the  thought.  Every  special  belief  constitutes  a 
rigidity  and  an  obtuseness,  but  this  consistence  is 


ERNEST  RENAN.  295 

necessary  in  its  own  season.  Our  monad,  in  so  far 
as  it  is  thinking,  clears  the  limits  of  time,  of  space, 
and  of  historic  surroundings  ;  but,  in  so  far  as  it  is 
individual,  and  for  the  sake  of  doing  something, 
it  adapts  itself  to  current  illusions,  and  sets  a  defi- 
nite goal  for  itself." 

These  lines  were  written  on  February  4,  1881. 
Amiel  died  on  the  nth  of  May,  of  the  same 
year.  He  had  his  defects  ;  but  he  certainly  was 
one  of  the  strongest  speculative  brains  which  re- 
flected upon  matters  in  the  period  from  1845  to 
1880.  The  form  which  he  selected  for  the  expo- 
sition of  his  thought — a  manuscript  journal  of 
16,000  pages — was  the  most  disadvantageous  possi- 
ble. Thanks  to  the  posthumous  care  of  his  friends, 
thanks  to  M.  Scherer,  who  has  set  forth  most  per- 
fectly, in  a  profound  study,  the  fine  character  of 
that  life,  Amiel's  thought  will  appear,  to  all  those 
who  take  an  interest  in  the  problems  of  philosophy, 
as  clear  and  complete  as  though  he  had  understood 
how  to  make  a  book  ;  that  is  to  say,  to  limit  himself. 


A  PHILOSOPHICAL  EXAMINATION  OF  CON- 
SCIENCE. 
I. 

THE  first  duty  of  the  sincere  man  is  not  to  influ- 
ence his  own  opinions,  to  allow  reality  to  reflect 
itself  in  him  as  in  the  dark  chamber  of  the  photog- 
rapher, and  to  assist  in  the  character  of  spectator 


296        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

at  the  inward  battles  which  ideas  carry  on  in  the 
depths  of  his  conscience.  We  should  not  interfere 
in  this  spontaneous  labor  ;  we  should  remain  pas- 
sive before  the  internal  modifications  of  our  intel- 
lectual retina.  Not  that  the  result  of  the  uncon- 
scious revolution  should  be  a  matter  of  indifference 
to  us  and  that  it  should  not  yield  to  serious  conse- 
quences ;  but  we  have  not  the  right  to  hold  a 
desire  when  reason  speaks ;  we  should  listen, 
nothing  more  ;  ready  to  allow  ourselves  to  be 
borne,  bound  hand  and  foot,  whither  the  best  argu- 
ments carry  us.  The  production  of  the  truth  is  an 
objective  phenomenon,  bound  to  the  Ego,  which 
takes  place  within  us  without  our  aid,  a  sort  of 
chemical  precipitate  which  we  must  content  our- 
selves with  contemplating  with  curiosity.  It  is 
good  to  pause  from  time  to  time,  to  withdraw  into 
one's  self  for  reflection  ;  to  examine  in  what  way 
the  manner  in  which  we  regard  the  world  may 
have  been  modified,  what  progress  the  ladder  lead- 
ing from  probability  to  certainty,  the  propositions 
which  we  have  made  the  base  of  our  life,  may 
have  made. 

One  thing  absolutely  beyond  doubt  is,  that  in  the 
universe  which  is  accessible  to  our  experience, 
we  do  not  observe  and  we  never  have  observed  any 
passing  fact  which  proceeds  from  a  will,  or  from 
wills  superior  to  that  of  man.  The  general  consti- 
tution of  the  world  is  filled  with  intentions,  appar- 
ent intentions  at  least ;  but  in  the  facts  in  detail 


ERNEST  RENAN.  297 

there  is  nothing  intentional.  That  which  is  at- 
tributed to  angels,  to  daimones,  to  particular  pro- 
vincial planetary  gods,  or  even  to  one  sole  God 
working  by  special  volitions,  has  no  reality.  In 
our  day,  nothing  of  this  sort  can  be  established. 
Written  texts,  if  we  take  them  seriously,  would  make 
us  believe  that  such  facts  did  occur  in  former  times  ; 
but  historical  criticism  demonstrates  the  slight  cred- 
ibility of  such  narrations.  If  the  rule  of  special 
volitions  had  been  the  law  at  any  epoch  of  the 
world,  one  would  be  able  to  perceive  some  remnant, 
some  shred  of  such  a  government  in  the  actual 
state.  Now,  the  present  actual  state  of  things 
presents  no  trace  of  any  action  coming'from  without. 
The  state  which  we  have  before  us  is  the  result  of 
a  development  whose  beginning  we  do  not  see  ;  in 
the  innumerable  links  of  this  chain,  we  do  not  dis- 
cover a  single  free  action,  before  the  appearance  of 
man,  or,  if  the  expression  is  preferred,  of  human 
beings.  Since  the  appearance  of  man  there 
has  been  a  free  cause  which  has  made  use  of  the 
forces  of  nature  for  definite  ends  ;  but  this  cause 
emanates  from  itself,  from  nature  ;  it  is  nature  re- 
covering herself,  attaining  consciousness.  What 
has  never  been  beheld  is  the  intervention  of  a 
superior  agent  to  correct  or  direct  the  blind  forces, 
to  enlighten  or  ameliorate  man,  to  prevent  a  fright- 
ful calamity,  to  hinder  an  injustice,  to  prepare  the 
way  for  the  execution  of  a  given  plan.  The  char- 
acter of  absolute  precision  of  the  world  which  we 


298       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

call  material,  would  suffice  to  set  aside  the  idea  of 
intention,  since  the  intentional,  nearly  always,  mani- 
fests itself  by  the  lack  of  geometrical  accuracy  and 
mere  approach  to  perfection. 

What  we  have  just  said  applies  with  a  sort  of 
experimental  certainty  to  the  planet  Earth,  whose 
history  is  sufficiently  well  known  to  us  to  prevent 
any  great  peculiarity  of  its  government  escaping 
our  notice.  We  can  apply  it  without  hesitation  to 
the  sun  and  to  the  whole  solar  system,  which  form, 
in  company  with  ourselves,  only  a  single,  small 
cosmos.  We  can  even  apply  it  to  the  whole  side- 
real system  which  is  revealed  to  the  inhabitants  of 
the  earth,  thanks  to  the  transparency  of  air  and 
space.*  In  spite  of  the  distances,  surpassing  all 
imagination,  which  separate  these  different  bodies 
from  each  other  and  from  us,  we  have  been  able  to 
verify  the  fact  that  the  physical  forces,  the  mechan- 
ism, the  chemistry  of  these  bodies  are  identical  with 
those  of  the  solar  system.  There  is  no  doubt  that 
they,  like  the  solar  system,  follow  the  laws  of  a 
development  which  contains  within  itself  its  own 
causes.  In  any  case,  were  it  otherwise,  the  onus 
probandi — the  burden  of  proof — would  lie  with 
those  who  should  maintain  the  contrary,  in  virtue 
of  the  principle  that  we  must  not  discuss  as  pos- 
sible that  which  no  indication  leads  us  to  assume. 
Every  indication,  however  slight,  should  be  fol- 

*  This  is  what  I  designate  as  universe,  throughout  all  of 
this  article. 


ERNEST  RENAN.  299 

lowed  up  by  science  with  zeal.  But  gratuitous 
assertion  needs  no  refutation — Quod  gratis  asseritur 
gratis  negatur. 

As  we  do  not  perceive  above  us  any  trace  of  in- 
telligence acting  with  a  view  to  determinate  ends, 
so  we  perceive  none  below  us.  The  ant,  although 
very  small,  is  more  intelligent  than  the  horse  ;  but 
if,  in  the  microbic  order,  there  were  very  intelligent 
beings,  we  should  perceive  them  through  the  acts 
of  reflection  emanating  from  them.  Now  the 
action  of  these  tiny  beings,  who  are  the  cause  of 
nearly  all  morbid  phenomena,  is  of  such  short 
range  that  a  very  advanced  state  of  science  has 
been  required  to  perceive  it  ;  at  the  present  mo- 
ment, their  action  is  still  almost  confounded  with 
chemical  and  mechanical  forces.  So  far  as  our 
experience  goes,  though  it  is  restricted,  no  doubt, 
intelligence  appears  limited  to  the  realm  of  the 
finite  :  above  and  below  all  is  night. 

We  may  then  assume,  as  a  thesis,  the  proposi- 
tion that  \hzjieri  by  internal  development,  without 
intervention  from  the  exterior,  is  the  law  of  the 
whole  universe  which  we  behold.  An  infinite 
number  of  blows  makes  everything  come  to  pass, 
and  causes  the  ends  attained  by  chance  to  seem 
to  have  been  attained  by  volition.  Our  universe, 
within  the  reach  of  our  experiment,  is  not  gov- 
erned by  any  intelligent  reason.  God,  as  the  com- 
mon herd  understand  him,  the  living  God,  the  act- 
ing God,  the  God-Providence,  does  not  show  him- 


300        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

self  in  it.  The  question  is,  to  know  whether  this 
universe  constitutes  the  totality  of  existence. 
Here  doubt  begins.  The  active  God  is  absent 
from  this  universe  ;  does  he  not  exist  beyond  it  ? 

And,  in  the  first  place,  is  this  universe  infinite  ? 
Does  the  golden  dust,  unequally  distributed,  which 
we  behold  above  our  heads,  on  a  clear  night,  fill 
space?  Is  it  certain  that  there  are  not  stations  in 
space  whence  an  eye  would  descry,  on  the  one 
hand,  a  sky  sown  with  stars,  like  the  one  on  which 
we  gaze  ;  on  the  other  a  black  abyss,  void  of  all 
luminous  bodies  ?  Immense  this  universe  certainly 
is.  But  what  is  a  decillion  of  leagues  in  compar- 
ison with  infinity  ? 

And  even  if  it  were  certain  that  space  is  filled 
with  suns,  and  is  without  limits,  would  it  follow 
that  there  are  not  other  infinites  of  a  superior  or 
inferior  order  ?  Infinitesimal  calculation  assuredly 
hinges  on  formulas  only  ;  but  these  formulas  are 
striking  symbols.  There  are  divers  orders  of  in- 
finites, of  which  the  inferior  are  as  zero  compared 
with  the  superior.  •  This  apparent  paradox  serves 
as  base  for  the  calculations  of  absolute  truth. 
Every  finite  quantity,  added  to  the  infinite  or  sub- 
tracted from  the  infinite,  is  equivalent  to  zero  ; 
every  finite  quantity  is  nothing  when  compared 
with  the  infinite.  Our  ideas  of  space  and  of  time 
are  all  relative.  The  distance  of  the  earth  from 
Sinus  is  enormous,  according  to  our  measurements  ; 
the  interior  voids  of  a  molecule  may  be  as  con- 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  301 

siderable  for  beings  endowed  with  another  criterion 
of  size.  The  longevity  of  our  world  might,  in  the 
eyes  of  a  god,  appear  the  equivalent  of  a  single 
day. 

All  seems  thus  composed  of  worlds  which  hardly 
exiit,  so  far  as  the  others  are  concerned,  but  which 
constitute  the  infinite  for  themselves.  He  who 
knows  France  best  is  ignorant  of  what  is  going  on 
in  a  thousand  little  provincial  centers  ;  he  who 
knows  one  of  these  little  centers  sees  nothing 
beyond,  and  finds  it  composed  of  still  smaller  cen- 
ters, each  one  of  which  beholds  only  itself.  Worlds 
inclosing  worlds,  the  infinitely  small  of  the  one 
being  the  infinitely  great  of  another — that  is  the 
truth  of  the  matter.  Our  reality — that  in  which  we 
live,  which  is  for  us  the  finite — is  composed  of  infin- 
ites of  an  inferior  order  ;  it  serves  itself  to  make 
superior  infinites.  It  is  an  infinitely  great  for  him 
who  is  beneath,  an  infinitely  small  for  him  who  is 
above,  a  medium  between  the  two  infinites. 

We  see  little  of  the  order  of  the  infinite  which  is 
beyond  us  ;  but  the  order  of  the  infinite  which  is 
below  us,  the  world  of  the  atom,  of  the  cell  of  the 
microbe  composed  of  microbes,  exists  with  as  much 
certainty  as  the  order  of  the  finite,  which  is  the 
habitual  subject  of  our  researches  and  of  our  medi- 
tations. The  negatives  of  the  memory,  those  in- 
numerable little  images  which  we  can  dust  off  and 
call  to  life  again  at  will,  are  contained  beneath  the 
osseous  casket  of  our  skul!,  in  a  very  limited  space, 


302        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

The  types  of  generation,  inclosed  one  in  another, 
like  the  germ  of  a  flower  in  a  bud,  are  another  ex- 
ample of  the  infinite  flexibility  of  space,  or  of  its 
relativity.*  The  atom  may  contain  an  infinite. 
The  coal  which  maintains  warmth  in  our  fireplaces 
is  composed  of  little  worlds  which  our  world 
employs ;  perhaps  we  are  the  atom  of  carbon 
which  maintains  the  warmth  of  another  word. 
We  do  not  behold  God  in  this  universe  ;  atheism 
is  logical  and  fatal  in  this  case  ;  but  this  universe 
is,  perhaps,  subordinate  ;  possibly  one  is  an  atheist 
because  one  does  not  see  far  enough.  Do  endless 
circles  command  each  other,  or  does  a  fixed  and 
immovable  absolute  unite  the  infinite  zones  of  the 
variable  and  mutable,  according  to  the  beautiful 
biblical  formula  :  Tu  autem  idem  ipse  est,  et  anni  tui 
non  deficiunt  ? — For  Thou  art  the  same,  and  Tin* 
years  fail  not.  We  know  absolutely  nothing  about 
it. 

It  is  in  the  comparison  of  the  atom  with  the 
universe  that  infinitesimal  considerations  receive 
their  just  application.  Relatively  to  the  order  of 
grandeurs  in  which  we  live,  the  atom  is  an  infinitely 
small  thing,  a  zero.  Relatively  to  the  size  below 
the  atom  is  infinitely  great.  The  atom  is  for  us  a 
point  of  resistance  :  the  conception  of  the  atom  as 
a  solid  plenum,  as  small  as  one  pleases,  must  be 

*  The  considerations  of  modern  geometry  upon  space  hav- 
ing more  than  three  dimensions  are,  perhaps,  connected  with 
the  reality  in  this  case. 


ERNEST  RENAtf.  303 

set  aside,  it  seems  ;  since  the  indivisible  plenum 
does  not  exist  in  nature.  Our  universe,  although 
composed  of  bodies  which  leave  immense  empty 
spaces  between  them,  is,  in  reality,  impenetrable. 
Let  us  assume  that  an  arrow  is  shot  with  infinite 
force  from  the  confines  of  the  universe  ;  that  arrow 
would  not  traverse  the  universe,  thinly  scattered  as 
it  is  in  appearance  ;  it  would  encounter  bodies 
without  number  which  would  stop  it  ;  just  as  a 
bullet  could  not  pass  through  a  cloud  without  get- 
ting wet. 

An  atom  of  a  simple  body,  an  atom  of  gold,  for 
example,  can  thus  be  conceived  as  a  universe, 
whose  different  components,  far  from  forming  a 
solid  plenum,  would  be  as  widely  separated  from 
each  other  as  the  different  centers  of  solar  systems. 
Impenetrability  would  result  from  the  internal 
invariability  of  such  a  body  which  no  natural  or 
scientific  means  has,  so  far,  been  able  to  assail. 
The  unassailable  character  of  the  simple  body 
would  be  analogous  to  the  stability  of  the  laws  of 
our  universe,  or  rather,  to  the  absence  of  special 
wills  in  the  government  of  this  universe.  The 
absence  of  all  external  intervention,  in  the  order  of 
things  which  we  see,  would  answer  to  the  fact  that 
no  chemist  has  succeeded,  up  to  the  present,  in 
destroying  that  grouping  of  an  infinite  primordial 
force  which  constitutes  an  atom. 

Hence,  it  is  not  exact  to  say  :  "  The  universe 
which  we  see  is  eternal,"  any  more  than  it  is  exact 


3°4       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

to  say  :  "The atom  is  eternal."  The  atom  has  had 
a  beginning — a  phenomenon  which  has  had  a  begin- 
ning, it  will  come  to  an  end.  That  which  has  never 
had  a  beginning  and  which  will  never  have  an  end 
is  the  all-absolute,  it  is  God.  Metaphysics  is  a 
science  which  has  but  one  line  :  "  Something  exists; 
hence,  something  has  existed  from  all  eternity  "  ; 
such  an  affirmation  is  equivalent  to  "  no  effect 
without  a  cause,"  art  assertion  which  certainly  con- 
tains an  element  of  experimentalism.  But,  between 
this  primordial  existence  and  the  world  which  we 
see,  there  are  infinite  intervals.  The  world  which 
we  see,  and  the  atom  of  a  simple  body  have,  per- 
haps, existed,  for  decillions  of  decillions  of  cen- 
turies ;  or,  what  amounts  to  the  same  thing,  for 
decillions  of  decillions  of  centuries  no  special  will 
has  assailed  either  our  universe  or  the  atom.  As 
the  human  imagination  does  not  grasp  the  difference 
between  the  infinite  and  the  indefinite,  this  suffices 
for  the  certainties  which  we  require.  We  cannot 
distinguish  between  the  probability  of  a  milliard 
against  one  and  certainty.  The  induction  :  "The 
sun  rose  to-day, hence  it  will  rise  to-morrow,"  gives 
ns  full  security  ;  that  great  fabric  of  approximations 
to  things,  which  constitutes  human  life,  finds  a  more 
solid  base  than  itself  in  this  fact  that,  never,  to  our 
knowledge,  have  the  laws  of  trature  been  infringed. 
But,  because  this  has  not  happened,  at  least 
within  an  enormous  period,  have  we  a  right  to  con- 
clude that  it  never  will  happen  ?  Perhaps  the 


ERNEST  RENAN.  3°5 

world  is  the  toy  of  a  Superior  Being,  the  experi- 
mental piece  of  a  transcendent  savant,  who  pos- 
sesses the  final  secrets  of  being.  Will  some 
chemist  of  genius  succeed,  one  of  these  days,  in 
decomposing  the  simple  atom  or  in  suppressing  it  ? 
Until  the  eve  of  the  day  when  such  a  discovery 
shall  be  made,  the  consciousnesses  which  may  ex- 
ist in  the  atom  *  will  say,  as  we  say  :  "  the  world  is 
immutable,  eternal,"  and  at  the  moment  of  the 
discovery,  they  will  recognize  their  error.  In  the 
same  way,  a  Superior  Being  may,  one  day,  direct 
an  attack  upon  the  law  of  stability  of  our  universe, 
without  much  more  concern  for  the  beings  which 
dwell  there  than  the  laborer  who  hacks  apart  a 
clod  of  earth  concerns  himself  about  the  insects 
who  may  be  living  out  their  little  lives  in  it. 
Without  going  into  the  profundities  of  chemical 
action,  let  us  take  as  the  object  of  our  meditation 
such  an  atom  lost  among  the  masses  of  granite 
which  form  the  substratum  of  our  shores.  It  has 
been  in  existence  for  thousands  of  centuries,  and, 
if  there  are  in  that  atom  sentient  beings  their 
opinion  must  be  that  their  world,  so  tiny  for  us,  so 
great  for  them,  is  impenetrable,  infinite,  autono- 

*  The  atom  is  no  more  conscious  than  the  universe  ; 
nothing  proves  it,  at  least  ;  but,  just  as  the  universe,  uncon- 
scious as  a  whole,  contains  consciousnesses — that  of  man,  for 
example — which  do  not  make  themselves  felt  in  the  whole  ; 
so  the  atom  may  contain,  in  its  elements,  twice  as  infinitely 
small,  in  comparison  with  us,  consciousnesses  which  do  not 
make  themselves  felt  in  the  whole. 


306        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

mous,  alive  in  itself.  They  would  be  mistaken, 
nevertheless.  Opposite  the  coast  of  Brittany, 
where  I  am  writing  these  lines,*  I  used  to  behold 
in  my  childhood  an  island,  Grand  Island,  which 
has  now  almost  completely  disappeared.  M. 
Haussmann  caused  it  to  disappear  ;  the  masses 
of  granite  of  which  it  was  composed  at  the  present 
moment  form  the  sidewalks  of  the  boulevards  in 
Paris,  which  were  constructed  under  the  Second 
Empire.  When  the  mine  began  to  work  in  those 
depths,  the  astonishment  of  the  millions  of  milliards 
of  tiny  worlds  which  lay  hidden  there  from  us,  in  a 
shadow  which  was  absolute  to  us,  must  have  been 
very  great.  And  only  the  granitic  universes 
situated  at  the  points  of  fracture  could  have  noticed 
anything.  In  the  interior  of  the  slabs  which  we 
tread  underfoot  in  Paris,  slumber  millions  of  uni- 
verses, as  tranquil  in  their  error  touching  the  auton- 
omy of  their  world  as  when  they  formed  part  of 
the  cliffs  of  Brittany.  The  light  will  dawn  for 
them  only  on  the  day  when  they  are  reduced  to 
macadam. 

The  surprise  experienced  by  the  little  universes 
of  the  granite  cliffs  of  Grand  Island,  the  surprise 
which  the  world  contained  in  an  atom  of  gold 
would  experience  if  the  gold  were  dissolved,  may 
be  in  store  for  us.  A  God  may  reveal  himself  one 
of  these  days.  The  eternity  of  our  universe  is  no 
longer  assured,  from  the  moment  that  we  have  a 
*  September  2,  1888. 


ERXEST  REXAN.  307 

right  to  suppose  that  it  is  a  finite,  subordinated  to 
an  infinite.  The  superior  infinite  ma}'  dispose  of 
it,  utilize  it,  apply  it  to  its  ends.  "  Nature  and  its 
author  "  is  not,  perhaps,  so  absurd  an  expression 
as  it  seems.  Everything  is  possible — even  God. 
The  history  of  the  universe  has  never  shown,  some- 
one may  object,  so  far  as  man  can  know,  any  reason 
for  forming  such  an  hypothesis.  No  doubt ;  but 
the  atoms  of  the  deep-lying  layers  of  granite  on 
Grand  Island  were  also  a  very  long  time  in  per- 
ceiving the  existence  of  humanity.  God  does  not 
make  appearances  in  the  world  which  we  can 
measure  and  observe  ;  but  we  cannot  prove  that 
he  does  not  make  them  in  the  infinity  of  time. 
Man  does  not  see  falsely,  as  subjective  skeptics 
suppose  ;  he  sees  in  a  narrow  way.  His  universe 
is  great  and  old,  no  doubt  ;  it  is  a  in  the  formula 
x-{-z,  and  in  this  case,  a=o. 

Hence,  it  is  not  impossible  that  outside  the  uni- 
verse which  we  know — finite  or  infinite,  it  matters 
not  which — there  is  an  infinite  of  another  order, 
in  which  our  universe  is  only  an  atom.  This  in- 
finite, which  would  be  God  *  for  us,  may  reveal 
itself  only  at  intervals,  in  our  estimation  extremely 
long,  but  insignificant  in  the  bosom  of  the  absolute. 
From  this  point  of  view,  the  existence  of  a  God 
with  special  volitions,  who  does  not  appear  in  our 

*  I  speak  in  a  relative  sense.  A  being  which  infinitely  sur- 
passes us  and  discloses  himself  to  us  by  special  intentional  acts, 
would  be  God  for  us,  as  man  is  the  god  of  the  animal. 


308        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

universe,  may  be  considered  possible  in  the  womb 
of  the  infinite,  or,  at  least,  it  is  as  rash  to  deny  it  as 
to  affirm  it. 

II. 

The  innumerable  individual  consciousnesses 
which  the  planet  Earth  has  produced,  which  the 
other  planets,  the  other  suns  may  have,  produced, 
certainly  have  the  air  of  being  destined  to  remain 
inclosed,  as  in  a  capsule,  in  the  universe  to  which 
they  have  belonged.  The  renewal  of  these  con- 
sciousnesses would  constitute  a  miracle,  as  those 
theologians  have  thought  who  have  maintained 
that  the  soul  of  man  is  immortal,  not  in  its  nature, 
but  through  a  special  volition  of  God.  In  the  sur- 
roundings which  we  are  experimenting  upon, 
miracles  do  not  take  place  ;  but,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  infinite,  nothing  is  impossible.  It  is 
very  curious  that  the  Jews,  who,  without  entertain- 
ing the  least  belief  in  an  immortal  soul,  have  con- 
tributed the  most  toward  disseminating  the  ideas 
as  to  future  recompenses,  under  the  form  of  belief 
in  the  kingdom  of  God  and  the  resurrection,  formed 
an  analogous  image,  conceiving  the  apparitions  of 
divine  justice  as  intermittent,  and  the  awakening 
of  the  just  as  a  miracle  wrought  directly  by  God. 
This  was,  assuredly,  better  than  the  sophisms  of 
the  "Phaedo."  The  infinity  of  the  future  settles 
many  difficulties.  If  God  exists,  he  must  be  good, 
and  he  will  end  by  being  just.  Man  would  thus 


EKNEST  RENAN.  3°9 

be  immortal  in  the  infinite,  to  infinity.  The  two 
great  postulates  of  human  life,  God  and  the  immor- 
tality of  the  soul,  which  are  gratuitous  assumptions 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  finite  in  which  we 
live,  are,  perhaps,  true,  within  the  limits  of  the 
infinite. 

As  time,  in  fact,  exists  only  in  a  wholly  relative 
manner,  a  sleep  of  a  decillion  years  is  no  longer 
than  a  sleep  of  an  hour.  Paradise  does  not 
exist ;  perhaps  it  will  exist,  in  a  decillion  of  years. 
Those  whom  a  tardy  justice  will  place  there,  once 
more,  will  think  that  they  died  the  day  before. 
As  in  the  legend  of  the  Middle  Ages,  when  they 
feel  of  their  death-bed,  they  will  find  it  still  warm. 
To  have  been  is  to  be.  Consecutiveness  is  the 
absolute  condition  of  our  spirit ;  but,  in  the  object, 
consecutiveness  and  simultaneousness  are  con- 
founded. From  this  point  of  view,  a  display  of 
fireworks  is  eternal.  My  grandson,  who  is  five 
years  old,  amuses  himself  so  well  in  the  country 
that  his  only  grief  consists  in  being  obliged  to  go 
to  bed.  "Mamma,"  he  asks  his  mother,  "will  the 
night  be  long  to-day  ?  "  When,  in  the  presence  of 
death,  we  ask  ourselves  :  "  Will  this  night  be  long  ? " 
we  are  no  less  artless. 

Here  the  mystery  is  absolute  ;  we  do  feel  within 
us  the  voice  of  another  world,  but  we  do  not  know 
what  that  world  is.  What  does  this  voice  tell  us? 
Things  that  are  tolerably  clear.  Whence  comes 
that  voice  ?  Nothing  is  more  obscure.  This  voice 


31°        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

makes  itself  heard  by  us  through  unexplained  in- 
clinations, impalpable  pleasures,  little  elfin  airs, 
fugitive,  intangible,  which  insinuate  to  us  devotion, 
which  render  us  capable  of  duty,  inspire  us  with 
courage,  make  us  experience  the  seductions  of 
beauty.  It  bursts  forth,  above  all,  in  those  sublime 
absurdities  in  which  one  becomes  entangled,  know- 
ing all  the  while  that  one  is  making  a  very  bad  bar- 
gain, in  those  four  grand  follies  of  man,  love,  re- 
ligion, poetry,  virtue  ;  providentially  useless  things 
which  the  egotistical  man  denies,  and  which,  in 
spite  of  him,  lead  the  world.  It  is  when  we  listen 
to  these  divine  voices  that  we  really  hear  the  har- 
mony of  the  celestial  spheres,  the  music  of  the  infi- 
nite. Prtzsiet  fides  supplementum  sensuum  defectui — 
Let  faith  supply  that  in  which  sense  is  deficient. 

Love  is  the  first  of  these  great  revelatory  in- 
stincts which  rule  all  creation,  and  which  seem  to 
have  been  imposed  by  a  supreme  will.*  Its  great 
excellence  lies  in  the  fact  that  all  beings  participate 

*  It  is  surprising  that  science  and  philosophy,  adopting  the 
frivolous  system  of  people  of  the  world  of  treating  the  case, 
which  is  mysterious  above  all  others,  as  a  simple  matter  for 
pleasantries,  should  not  have  made  of  love  the  capital  object  of 
their  researches  and  their  speculations.  It  is  the  most  extra- 
ordinary and  the  most  suggestive  fact  of  the  universe.  Through 
a  prudery  which  has  no  sense  in  the  system  of  philosophical 
reflection,  people  do  not  mention  it,  or  confine  themselves  to  a 
few  foolish  platitudes.  People  will  not  see  that  they  are  in  the 
presence  of  the  nodal  point  of  things,  in  the  presence  of  the 
most  profound  secret  in  the  world.  The  fear  of  fools  should, 


ERNEST  A' EN  AN.  311 

in  it,  and  that  we  clearly  perceive  its  connection 
with  the  ends  of  the  universe.  Its  first  nest  ap- 
pears to  have  been  in  the  origins  of  life,  in  the  cell. 
The  beginning  of  the  duality  of  the  sexes  commu- 
nicated to  it  a  direction  which  thenceforth  never 
underwent  change,  and  produced  marvelous  blos- 
somings. The  dissonance  of  the  two  sexes,  uniting 
at  a  certain  height  in  a  divine  consonance,  whence 
is  born  the  perfect  accord  of  creation,  is  the  funda- 
mental faith  of  the  world.  In  the  vegetable  king- 
dom, these  mysterious  aspirations  are  summed  up 
in  the  flower — the  flower,  that  unrivaled  problem, 
before  which  our  giddiness  passes  with  stupid  in- 
attention ;  the  flower,  a  language  splendid  or 
charming,  but  absolutely  enigmatical,  which  seems, 
indeed,  an  act  of  adoration  from  the  earth  to  an 
invisible  lover,  according  to  a  rite  which  remains 
always  the  same.  The  tiny  flower,  in  fact,  which 
man  hardly  sees,  is  as  perfect  as  the  great  one. 
Nature  employs  the  same  coquetry  in  its  fabrica- 
tion ;  the  same  being  is  reflected  in  both. 

not,  however,  prevent  that  which  is  serious  from  being  treated 
seriously.  Physiologists  will  see  nothing  in  it  but  that  which 
is  connected  with  the  play  of  the  organs.  I  spoke  one  day  to 
Claude  Bernard  of  the  deep  significance  contained  in  the  fact 
of  sexual  attraction.  He  answered  me,  after  a  momentary 
reflection:  "No;  they  are  clearly  defined  functions,  conse- 
quences of  nutrition."  Very  good  ;  but,  in  that  case,  let  a 
science  be  founded  which  shall  occupy  itself  with  the  obscure 
consequences  of  the  clearly  defined  functions.  Why,  for  ex- 
ample, has  the  flower  perfume  ? 


3 1 2        RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LE  TTERS  OF 

In  the  bosom  of  the  animal  kingdom,  the  equiva- 
lent of  the  flower  is  the  intoxication  of  joy  of  the 
child,  the  beauty  of  the  young  girl,  that  gleam  of  a 
day,  that  luminous  exudation  which,  like  the  phos- 
phorescence of  the  glowworm,  shows  the  feverish 
ardor  of  a  life  aspiring  to  its  blossoming.  Like 
the  flower,  beauty  is  impersonal ;  the  effort  of  the 
individual  counts  for  nothing  here.  It  is  born, 
appears  for  a  moment,  vanishes,  like  a  natural  phe- 
nomenon. Nature  in  her  entirety  is  herself  a  great 
flower  full  of  harmony.  One  finds  therein  no  fault 
of  design.  "  It  is  we,"  people  say,  "  who  put  this 
harmony  into  it."  How  does  it  happen,  then,  that 
man  so  often  spoils  nature?  The  world  is  beauti- 
ful until  man  touches  it ;  absurdities,  awkward- 
nesses, bad  ta*ste,  false  colors,  crudities,  deformi- 
ties, vileness  begin  with  the  appearance  of  man  in 
this  paradise,  hitherto  immaculate. 

With  the  animal  love  has  been  the  principle  of 
beauty.  It  is  because,  at  that  moment,  the  male 
bird  makes  a  supreme  effort  to  please,  that  his 
colors  are  more  vivid,  and  his  form  better  out- 
lined.* With  man,  love  has  been  a  school  of 
gentleness  and  courtesy.  I  will  add,  of  religion 
and  morals.  An  hour  when  the  most  wicked 
being  experiences  an  impulse  of  tenderness,  when 

*  Things  have  been  overturned  by  humanity.  The  true 
analogue  of  the  beauty  of  the  male  is  the  modesty  of  the  fe- 
male. A  little  air  of  reserve,  of  timidity,  of  touching  subjec- 
tion, has  finally  become  more  attractive  to  man  than  beauty. 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  3r3 

the  narrowest  individual  has  the  sentiment  of  in- 
timate communion  with  the  universe  is,  assuredly, 
a  divine  hour.  It  is  because,  at  that  hour,  man 
hears  the  voice  of  nature,  that  in  it  he  contracts 
lofty  duties,  takes  sacred  vows,  tastes  supreme 
joys,  or  prepares  for  himself  acute  remorse.  In 
any  case,  it  is  the  hour  in  his  fugitive  life  when 
man  is  at  his  best.  The  immense  sensation  which 
he  experiences  when  he  thus  emerges,  in  a  man- 
ner, from  himself,  shows  that  he  really  comes 
in  contact  with  the  infinite.  Love,  understood 
in  a  lofty  way,  is  thus  a  religious  thing,  or  rather, 
a  part  of  religion.  Could  one  believe  that  friv- 
olity and  folly  have  succeeded  in  causing  this 
ancient  remnant  of  relationship  with  nature  to  be 
regarded  as  a  shameful  remains  of  animalism  ?  Is 
it  possible  that  so  holy  an  aim  as  that  of  continu- 
ing the  species  could  have  been  attached  to  a 
culpable  or  ridiculous  act  ?  One  attributes  to  the 
Eternal,  by  this  supposition,  a  grotesque  intention 
or  a  veritable  piece  of  buffoonery. 

The  serious  character  of  love  has  been  obliter- 
ated by  levity.  Duty  is  surely  something  from 
above,  since  it  is  accompanied  by  no  pleasure  and 
often  entails  harsh  sacrifices.  And  nevertheless, 
man  clings  to  it  almost  as  much  as  to  love.  Man 
is  grateful  when  he  is  furnished  with  reasons  for 
believing  in  devotion  ;  to  prove  duty  to  him  is  to 
find  his  titles  of  nobility  for  him  once  more.  One 
is  not  welcome  when  one  proposes  to  deliver  him 


3 14       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

from  it.  The  care  of  the  animal  for  its  offspring, 
a  multitude  of  facts  which  show  us  the  need  of 
sacrifice  in  consciences  the  most  egotistical  in  ap- 
pearance, prove  that  very  few  beings  avoid  the 
commandments  established  by  nature  in  view  of 
ends  for  which  they  themselves  care  very  little. 
Duty  and  the  instincts  for  building  a  nest  and 
hatching,  in  the  bird,  have  the  same  providential 
origin.  Even  in  the  most  vulgar  life,  the  share  of 
what  is  done  for  God  is  enormous.  The  most 
degraded  being  prefers  to  be  just  rather  than 
unjust  ;  we  all  adore,  we  all  pray  many  times  in 
the  day,  without  knowing  it. 

Whence  come  those  voices,  now  sweet,  now 
austere?  They  come  from  the  universe,  from  God, 
if  you  like.  The  universe,  with  which  we  are  con- 
nected as  by  an  umbilical  cord,  will  have  devotion, 
duty,  virtue  ;  in  order  to  attain  its  ends,  it  employs 
religion,  poetry,  love,  pleasure,  all  sorts  of  decep- 
tions. And  what  the  universe  wills,  it  will  always 
compel ;  for  it  possesses  unprecedented  ruses  to 
support  its  decrees.  The  most  self-evident  courses 
of  reasoning  of  the  critics  will  not  be  able  to  do 
anything  toward  demolishing  these  sacred  illusions. 
Women,  in  particular,  will  always  offer  resistance  ; 
we  may  say  what  we  will,  they  will  not  believe  us, 
and  we  are  delighted  at  it.  That  which  is  in  us, 
without  our  own  will  and  in  spite  of  ourselves,  the 
unconscious,  in  a  word,  is  the  revelation  above  all 
others.  Religion,  the  summing  up  of  moral  needs, 


ERNEST  RE  NAN.  315 

of  man's  virtue,  modesty,  disinterestedness,  sacri- 
fice, are  the  voice  of  the  universe.  Everything  is 
contained  in  an  act  of  faith  to  instincts  which 
assail  us,  without  convincing  us ;  in  obedience  to  a 
language  coming  from  the  infinite,  a  language  per- 
fectly clear,  as  to  what  it  commands  us,  obscure  as 
to  what  it  promises.  We  see  the  charm  ;  we  baffle 
it  ;  but  it  will  never  be  broken,  for  all  that.  Quis 
posuit  in  visceribus  hominis  sapientiam  ? — Who  has 
placed  understanding  in  the  bowels  of  man  ? 

Of  this  supreme  resultant  of  the  total  universe 
we  can  say  only  one  thing,  that  it  is  good.  For,  if 
it  were  not  good,  the  total  universe,  which  has  ex- 
isted from  all  eternity,  would  have  been  destroyed. 
Let  us  suppose  a  banking  house  which  has  existed 
from  all  eternity.  If  this  house  had  the  least  de- 
fect in  its  basis,  it  would  have  suffered  bankruptcy 
a  thousand  times.  If  the  balance  of  the  world 
were  not  liquidated  by  a  surplus  to  the  profit  of 
the  shareholders,  the  world  would  have  ceased  to 
exist  long  ago.  A  profit,  a  favorable  remainder  is 
the  result  of  this  immense  balancing  of  the  ledgers 
of  good  and  evil.  This  surplus  of  good  is  the 
reason  for  the  universe's  existence,  and  for  its 
preservation.  Why  be,  if  there  is  no  profit  in  being  ? 
It  is  so  easy  not  to  be. 

I  regard  as  superficial  the  objections  which  some 
learned  men  raise  against  finality,  by  calling  atten- 
tion to  certain  imperfections  of  nature,  defects  of 
the  human  body,  for  example,  such  and  such  a 


316       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

muscle  which  constitutes  a  lever  of  the  least  effect- 
ive sort,  the  eye  constructed  with  a  singular  approx- 
imation only  to  what  it  should  be.  One  forgets 
that  the  conditions  of  creation,  if  one  may  express 
one's  self  thus,  are  limited  by  the  balancing  of  con- 
flicting advantages  and  inconveniences.  It  is  a 
curve  determined  beforehand  by  the  asesmbling  of 
its  co-ordinates,  and  written  in  advance  in  an  ab- 
stract equation.  A  better  lever  to  the  forearm 
would  have  given  us  the  conformation  of  pelicans. 
An  eye  which  should  avoid  the  defects  of  the  present 
eye  would  fall,  probably,  into  more  serious  incon- 
veniences still.  More  powerful  brains  than  the 
best  human  brains  can  be  conceived  ;  but  they 
would  have  entailed  for  those  endowed  with  them 
congestions  and  cerebral  fevers.  A  man  who 
should  never  be  ill,  on  the  other  hand,  would 
probably  be  condemned  to  incurable  mediocrity. 
A  humanity  which  was  not  revolutionary,  tor- 
mented by  Utopias,  would  resemble  an  ant-hill, 
a  China  which  believes  that  it  has  found  the  per- 
fect form  and  abides  by  it.  A  humanity,  which 
was  not  superstitious,  would  cherish  discour- 
aging  positivism.  Now,  nature  possesses  a  sort 
of  foresight ;  she  does  not  create  that  which 
would  be  destined  to  perish  through  an  inherent 
blemish.  She  divines  the  roads  which  have  no 
exit,  and  does  not  entangle  herself  in  them. 

Certain    inconveniences   of   the   body   are   like 
historical  abuses,  which  the  progress  of  evolution 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  3T7 

has  not  taken  an  interest  in  reforming.  When  the 
inconvenience  has  been  sufficiently  grave  to  kill 
the  individual  and  extinguish  the  species,  the 
struggle  has  been  to  the  death  ;  the  mortal  blemish 
has  been  corrected,  or  the  species  has  become 
extinct ;  but  when  the  defect — for  example,  the 
useless  prolongation  of  the  caecum — was  merely  of 
a  nature  to  produce  some  maladies,  some  deaths, 
nature  has  not  considered  it  worth  her  while  to 
take  violent  measures  for  so  small  a  matter.  It  is 
thus  that,  in  a  society,  the  extirpation  of  great 
abuses  is  easier  than  the  correction  of  the  lesser 
abuses  ;  for,  in  the  first  case,  it  is  a  question  of 
life  and  death  ;  in  the  second,  no  one  takes  suffi- 
cient interest  in  the  reform  to  engage  in  a  radical 
battle.  The  objections  of  the  learned  men,  who 
hold  themselves  on  their  guard  against  what  they 
consider  a  resurrection  of  finalism,  are  directed,  at 
bottom,  against  the  system  of  a  wise  and  omnipo- 
tent Creator.  They  do  not  bear  upon  our  hypoth- 
esis of  a  profound  nisus  (pressure)  exerting  itself 
in  a  blind  way  in  the  abysses  of  being,  urging 
all  to  existence,  at  every  point  in  space.  This 
nisus  is  neither  conscious  nor  all-powerful ;  it  puts 
the  matter  which  is  at  its  disposal  to  the  best  pos- 
sible profit.  Hence  it  is  quite  natural  that  it  should 
not  have  made  things  which  offer  contradictory 
perfections.  It  is  natural,  also,  that  the  part  of  the 
cosmos  which  we  behold  should  present  limits  and 
gaps,  arising  from  the  insufficiency  of  the  material? 


318        RECOLLECTIONS  AXD  LETTERS  OF 

which  nature  had  under  its  control  at  a  given 
point.  It  is  the  nisus  acting  upon  the  totality  of 
the  universe  which  will  perhaps,  some  day,  be  con- 
scious, omniscient,  omnipotent.  Then  a  degree  of 
consciousness  can  be  realized  of  which  nothing  at 
the  present  time  can  give  us  an  idea.  In  the 
Middle  Ages,  the  highest  result  of  the  world,  at 
least  of  the  planet  Earth,  was  a  choir  of  monks 
chanting  psalms.  The  science  of  our  epoch, 
responding  to  the  desire  which  the  world  feels  for 
knowing  itself,  attains  very  superior  effects.  The 
College  of  France  is  far  beyond  the  most  per- 
fect Abbey  of  the  Order  of  the  Cistercians.  The 
future  will,  no  doubt,  bring  about  far  finer  results 
still.  In  the  infinite,  the  absolute  Being,  having 
reached  the  acme  of  his  deific  evolutions,  and 
understanding  himself  perfectly,  will,  perhaps, 
realize  these  fine  verses  of  the  Christian  mysticism  : 

Illic  secum  habitans  in  penetralibus, 
Se  rex  ipse  suo  contuitu  beat.* 

III. 

Thus  the  two  fundamental  dogmas  of  religion, 
God  and  immortality,  remain  rationally  undemon- 
strable  ;  but  one  cannot  say  that  they  are  smitten 
with  absolute  impossibility.  The  touching  efforts 
of  humanity  to  save  these  two  dogmas  must  not  be 

*  Dwelling  alone  in  strictest  solitude,  the  king  delights  in 
his  happiness. 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  319 

censured  as  being  a  pure  chimera.  A  general  con- 
sciousness of  the  universe,  a  soul  of  the  world,  are 
things  which  experience  has  never  proved  ;  but  a 
molecule  from  one  of  our  bones  has  no  suspicion 
of  the  general  consciousness  of  the  body  of  which 
it  forms  a  part,  of  that  which  constitutes  our  unity. 
The  most  logical  attitude  of  the  thinker  in  the 
presence  of  religion  is  to  act  as  though  it  were 
true.  One  must  behave  as  though  God  and  the 
soul  existed.  Religion  thus  comes  under  the  head 
of  those  numerous  hypotheses,  such  as  the 
ether,  the  electric,  nervous,  luminous,  and  caloric 
fluids,  the  atom  itself,  which  we  are  well  aware  are 
only  symbols,  convenient  means  of  explaining  phe- 
nomena, and  which  we  uphold  all  the  same.  God, 
creating  the  world  by  virtue  of  profound  calcula- 
tions, is  a  very  coarse  formula  ;  but  things  con- 
duct themselves  very  nearly  as  though  that  was 
what  did  take  place.  The  soul  does  not  exist  as  a 
separate  substance  ;  but  things  go  on  very  much 
as  though  it  did  exist.  Nothing  has  ever  been  re- 
vealed to  any  human  family  by  supernatural  voices, 
and  yet  revelation  is  a  metaphor  which  religious 
history  finds  it  difficult  to  dispense  with.  The 
eternal  paradise  promised  to  man  has  no  reality, 
and  nevertheless,  it  is  necessary  to  act  as  though 
it  had  ;  it  is  necessary  that  those  who  do  not  be- 
lieve in  it  should  surpass  in  goodness  and  in  abne- 
gation those  who  do  believe  in  it. 

People   are   accustomed    to    present   these  two 


320       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

great  consolatory  dogmas,  God  and  immortality, 
as  the  postulates  of  the  moral  life  of  Christianity  ; 
and  certainly,  this  is  right,  in  many  respects.  To 
act  for  God,  to  act  in  .the  presence  of  God,  are 
conceptions  requisite  to  a  virtuous  life.  We  do 
not  demand  a  rewarder  ;  but  we  do  wish  for  a 
witness.  The  recompense  of  the  cuirassiers  of 
Reichsofen  in  eternity  is  the  phrase  of  the  old 
Emperor  :  "  Oh  !  the  brave  fellows  !  "  We  should 
like  a  phrase  of  that  sort  from  God.  Sacrifices  ig- 
nored, virtue  misunderstood,  the  inevitable  errors 
of  human  justice,  the  irrefutable  calumnies  of  his- 
tory, render  legitimate,  or  rather  lead  fatally  to, 
an  appeal  from  the  consciousness  oppressed  by 
fatality  to  the  consciousness  of  the  universe.  This 
is  a  right  which  the  virtuous  man  will  never  re- 
nounce. In  the  heroic  situations  of  the  Revolu- 
tion, the  necessity  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul 
was  claimed  by  nearly  all  parties.  The  solicitude 
of  the  men  of  that  epoch  for  their  memoirs  and 
their  justificatory  documents,  depended  on  the 
same  principle.  They  wrote  and  wrote,  persuaded 
that  there  would  be  someone  to  read  them.  They 
imperatively  demanded  a  judge  beyond  the  tomb  ; 
they  demanded  it  from  the  consciousness  of  the 
wjDrld,  or  from  the  consciousness  of  humanity. 
Humanity  is  thus  driven  to  bay  in  this  singular 
pass  without  exit  that,  the  more  it  reflects,  the 
more  it  perceives  the  moral  necessity  of  God  and 
immortality,  and  the  better  also  it  perceives  the 


ERNEST  REN  AN.  321 

difficulties   which  rise  against  the   dogmas  whose 
necessity  it  affirms. 

These  difficulties  are  of  the  gravest ;  they  must 
not  be  concealed.  Ancient  religious  ideas  were 
founded  on  the  narrow  concept  of  a  world  created 
several  thousand  years  ago,  of  which  the  earth  and 
man  were  the  center.  A  little  earth  containing  a 
computable  number  of  inhabitants,  a  little  heaven 
surmounting  it  like  a  cupola,  a  celestial  cpurt  a  few 
leagues  away  in  the  air,  all  busied  with  the  childish 
affairs  of  mankind,  with  the  Isles  of  the  Blessed, 
situated  to  the  Westward,  whither  the  dead  betake 
themselves  in  a  bark,  or  a  paper  paradise,  which 
the  slightest  scientific  reflection  will  tear  asunder, 
that  is  a  world  which  a  God  with  a  great  white 
beard  can  easily  wrap  in  the  folds  of  his  garment. 
When  Nimrod  launched  his  arrows  against  heaven, 
they  returned  to  him  stained  with  blood  ;  we  may 
shoot  as  we  will,  the  arrows  no  longer  return  to  us. 
The  enlargement  of  the  idea  of  the  world,  and  the 
scientific  demolition  of  the  ancient  anthropocentric 
hypothesis,  in  the  sixteenth  century,  is  the  capital 
moment  in  the  history  of  the  human  mind.  Aris- 
tarchus  of  Samos  had  the  first  gleam  of  light  on 
that  point,  and  he  was  considered  impious.  The 
rage  of  the  Church  against  the  founders  of  the  new 
order — Copernicus,  Giordano  Bruno,  Galileo — was 
sufficiently  consistent  in  the  same  line.  The  little 
world  over  which  the  Church  had  reigned,  with  its 
dogmas  restricted  to  the  earth,  was  irrevocably 


3  2  2       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LE  TTERS  OF 

broken.  The  most  modern  views  upon  the  ages  of 
nature  and  the  revolutions  of  the  globe,  by  throw- 
ing open  to  man  the  perspective  of  the  infinite  of 
past  time,  have  had  the  same  result  in  a  still  more 
conclusive  fashion. 

We  shall  not  be  able  to  reconstruct  the  ancient 
dreams.  If  the  law  of  the  world  were  a  narrow 
fanaticism,  if  error  were  the  condition  of  human 
morality,  there  would  be  no  reason  to  take  an 
interest  in  a  globe  vowed  to  ignorance.  We 
love  humanity  because  it  produces  science  ;  we 
hold  fast  to  morality  because  honest  races  alone 
can  be  scientific  races.  If  we  were  to  set  ignorance 
as  the  necessary  limit  of  humanity,  we  should  no 
longer  see  any  reason  for  caring  about  its  ex- 
istence. The  humanity  which  the  reactionaries 
invoke  by  their  desires  would  be  so  insignificant 
that  I  should  prefer  to  see  it  perish  by  anarchy  and 
lack  of  morality,  rather  than  by  folly.  The  return 
of  humanity  to  its  ancient  errors,  regarded  as  irr- 
dispensable  to  its  moral ity,  would  be  worse  than 
its  utter  demoralization. 

Hence  we  must  make  our  choice,  and  in  our 
views  of  the  universe  avoid  the  absurdity  of  the 
provincials,  who  seeing  nothing  beyond  their  own 
clock-tower,  imagine  that  all  the  world  is  troubling 
itself  about  their  affairs,  that  the  king's  sole  solici- 
tude is  for  their  petty  town,  that  tod  even  has  an 
opinion  about  the  petty  cliques  into  which  it  is 
split  up.  Humanity  is  in  the  world  what  an  ant- 


ERWEST  REMAN.  323 

hill  is  in  a  forest.  The  internal  revolutions  of  an 
ant-hill,  its  decadence,  its  ruin,  are  secondary 
matters  in  the  history  of  a  forest.  If  humanity  suf- 
fers shipwreck  for  lack  of  knowledge  or  virtue — if 
it  fails  in  its  vocation,  its  duties — analogous  occur- 
rences have  taken  place  thousands  of  times  in  the 
history  of  the  universe.  Let  us  then  take  care  not 
to  believe  that  postulates  are  the  measure  of 
reality.  Nature  is  not  obliged  to  bend  to  our  little 
conventions.  To  this  declaration  of  man  :  •"  I 
cannot  be  virtuous  without  such  or  such  a  chimera," 
the  Eternal  has  a  right  to  reply  ;  "  So  much  the 
worse  for  you.  Your  chimeras  will  not  force  me 
to  change  the  order  of  fatality." 

What  still  further  weakens  a  priori  reasoning  on 
this  point  is,  that  among  the  postulates  of  hu- 
manity, there  are  some  which  are  notoriously  im- 
possible. It  must  be  noted  well  that  the  God 
which  the  greater  part  of  humanity  assumes  is  not 
the  God  situated  in  the  infinite,  whose  existence 
we  admit  as  possible.  That  God  is  too  distant  for 
piety  to  attach  itself  to.  What  the  vulgar  herd 
wishes  is  a  God  who  certainly  does  not  exist,  a 
God  who  busies  himself  about  rain  and  fair 
weather,  about  war  and  peace,  about  the  jealousies 
of  men  among  each  other,  who  can  be  made  to 
change  his  mind  by  importunity.  Humanity,  in 
other  terms,  would  like  to  have  a  God  for  itself,  a 
God  who  takes  an  interest  in  its  quarrels,  a  special 
God  of  the  planet,  ruling  it  like  a  good  governor, 


3^4       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

like  the  provincial  gods  dreamed  of  by  paganism 
in  its  decadence.  Each  nation  goes  further ;  it 
would  like  to  have  a  God  for  itself  alone.  An 
idol  would  suit  it  still  better,  and,  if  a  free  course 
were  accorded  to  the  desires  of  men,  they  would 
claim  powers  for  their  national  relics,  for  their 
sacred  images.*  How  many  postulates  which  will 
not  be  taken  into  account  in  the  least !  Man 
needs  a  God  who  shall  be  in  conformity  with  his 
planet,  his  century,  his  country  :  does  it  follow 
that  such  a  God  exists  ?  Man  has  need  of  per- 
sonal immortality  :  does  it  follow  that  this  immor- 
tality exists?  In  other  words,  man  is  in  despair 
at  forming  part  of  an  infinite  world  in  which  he 
counts  for  zero.  A  paradise  composed  of  a  de- 
cillion  of  beings  is  not  at  all  the  little  family  para- 
dise, where  people  know  each  other,  where  they 
continue  to  be  neighborly,  to  barter  and  intrigue 
together.  God  must  be  petitioned  to  contract  the 
world,  to  put  Copernicus  in  the  wrong,  to  bring  us 
back  to  the  cosmos  of  -the  Campo  Santo  of  Pisa, 
surrounded  by  nine  choirs  of  angels,  and  held  in 
the  arms  of  Christ. 

Thus    we    arrive    at   this    strange    result,    that 

*  This  is  why  vulgar  devotion  goes  further  in  the  case  of 
the  saints  than  with  God.  Pure  deism  will  never  be  the  relig- 
ion of  the  people  ;  in  fact  the  deist  and  the  common  herd  do 
not  adore  the  same  God.  There  exists  here  a  certain  mis- 
understanding, with  which  a  certain  philosophy  has  been  able 
to  cover  itself  in  time  of  war,  but  over  which  it  must  cherish 
a  scruple  in  time  of  peace. 


ERA'EST  RENAN.  325 

immortality  is,  a  priori,  the  most  necessary  of 
dogmas  and,  a  posteriori,  the  most  feeble.  Like 
the  ant  or  the  bee,  we  work  from  instinct  at  com- 
mon  tasks,  whose  bearing  we  do  not  see.  The 
bees  would  cease  their  toil,  if  they  read  articles 
which  told  them  that  their  honey  would  be  taken 
from-  them,  that  they  would  be  killed  in  recompense 
for  their  toil.  Man  goes  on  still  in  spite  of  his  sic 
vos  non  vobis — this  do  ye,  but  not  for  yourselves. 
We  see  neither  that  which  is  above  us,  nor  that 
.which  is  beneath  us.  "We  are  the  chain-gang," 
a  man  of  superior  mind  said  to  me.  The  divine 
intentions  are  obscure.  We  are  one  of  the  mil- 
lions of  fellahs  who  worked  at  the  Pyramids. 
The  result  is  the  Pyramid.  The  work  is  anony- 
mous, but  it  lasts  ;  each  one  of  the  workmen  lives 
in  it.  What  would  really  not  be  unjust,  is  what  the 
factory  workmen  are  demanding,  that  we  should 
be  associated  in  the  work  of  the  universe  in  the 
matter  of  participating  in  the  profits,  that  we 
should,  at  least,  know  something  of  the  results  of 
our  labors.  Now,  though  admitted  to  the  labors, 
we  are  not  admitted  to  the  dividends,  and  even  our 
salary  is  very  badly  paid  to  us.  Others  would  get 
up  a  strike  ;  as  for  us,  we  go  on  just  the  same. 

Upon  the  whole,  the  existence  of  a  conscious- 
ness superior  to  the  universe  is  much  more  prob- 
able than  individual  immortality.  We  have  no 
other  foundation  for  our  hopes  in  this  respect  than 
the  great  presumption  as  to  the  goodness  of  the 


326       RECOLLECTIONS  AND  LETTERS  OF 

Supreme  Being.  Everything  will  be  possible  to 
him  one  of  these  days.  Let  us  hope  that  he  will 
then  wish  to  be  just,  and  that  he  will  then  restore,  to 
those  who  have  contributed  to  the  triumph,  the  con- 
sciousness of  life.  This  will  be  a  miracle.  But  the 
miracle,  that  is  to  say,  the  intervention  of  a  Supe- 
rior Being,  which  does  not  take  place  now,  may 
possibly,  some  day,  when  God  shall  be  conscious, 
be  the  normal  rule  of  the  universe.  The  Judseo- 
Christian  dreams,  placing  the  reign  of  God  at  the 
termination  of  humanity,  will  still  preserve  their, 
grandiose  truth.  The  world,  now  governed  by  a 
blind  or  impotent  consciousness,  may  be  governed 
some  day  by  a  more  thoughtful  consciousness. 
All  injustice  will  then  be  repaired,  all  tears  dried. 
Absterget  deus  omnem  lacryinam  ab  oculis  eoruin — God 
shall  wipe  away  every  tear  from  their  eyes. 

The  pearl  oyster  appears  to  me  to  be  the  best 
image  of  the  universe,  and  of  the  degree  of  con- 
sciousness which  we  must  assume  in  the  whole. 
At  the  bottom  of  the  abyss,  obscure  germs  create 
a  singular  consciousness  badly  served  by  organs 
yet  tremendously  clever  in  attaining  its  ends. 
What  is  called  a  malady  of  their  little  living  cosmos, 
superinduces  a  secretion  of  ideal  beauty,  the  pos- 
session of  which  men  dispute  with  each  other  at 
cost  of  gold.  The  general  life  of  the  universe  is, 
like  that  of  the  oyster,  vague,  obscure,  singularly 
restricted,  slow  in  consequence.  Suffering  creates 
mind,  intellectual  and  moral  movement.  Malady 


ERNEST  RENAN.  327 

of  the  world,  if  you  will,  pearl  of  the  world  in 
reality,  the  mind  is  the  goal,  the  final  cause,  the 
last  and  certainly  the  most  brilliant  result  of  the 
world  which  we  inhabit.  It  is  very  probable  that, 
if  there  are  ulterior  results,  they  are  of  an  in- 
finitely more  elevated  order. 


THE   END. 


" " mil  mn  inn  mil  M  mi  |||| 

A     000  023  648     9 


